by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, September 1, 2005 3:27 P.M. EDT

'Will New Orleans Recover?'
City Journal's Nicole Gelinas, a onetime resident of New Orleans, asks the question that's been on our mind the past few days. She isn't optimistic:

No American city has ever gone through what New Orleans must go through: the complete (if temporary) flight of its most affluent and capable citizens, followed by social breakdown among those left behind, after which must come the total reconstruction of economic and physical infrastructure by a devastated populace.

And the locals and outsiders who try to help New Orleans in the weeks and months to come will do so with no local institutional infrastructure to back them up. New Orleans has no real competent government or civil infrastructure--and no aggressive media or organized citizens' groups to prod public officials in the right direction during what will be, in the best-case scenario, a painstaking path to normalcy.

The New Orleans crime rate during normal times is 10 times the national average, Gelinas writes, and "the city's economy is utterly dependent on tourism. . . . New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled, leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government. Socially, New Orleans is one of America's last helpless cities--just at the moment when it must do all it can to help itself survive."

There's another, even simpler reason for pessimism. Many residential areas in New Orleans are below sea level, so that it was only a matter of time before they ended up in the soup. Having experienced this horror firsthand, will residents of New Orleans (and its suburbs, which are also devastated) be eager to return and face future hurricane seasons? Would you be?

When the Saints Go Marching In
On Monday we said a test of New Orleans's recovery would be whether the Saints are able to play their home opener, scheduled for Sept. 18 against the New York Giants, at the Superdome. It's now a virtual certainty that won't happen. The Associated Press reports the NFL team will base its operations at a San Antonio hotel:

Beyond that, question marks abound. It is highly unlikely that they will be able to play their home opener Sept. 18 at the Superdome--and they may not be able to play there at all this season after the stadium was damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The first game, against the New York Giants, could be at the Alamodome in San Antonio, at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La., or even at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala.

All of those sites could host other home games for the Saints, who escaped the hurricane by flying with their families last weekend to San Jose, Calif. New Orleans plays at Oakland tonight in its final exhibition game.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, has a report from the Superdome, which has become a "refugee city" providing temporary accommodations to between 15,000 and 25,000 people left homeless by Katrina. The description is very much like that predicted by the Wizbang! blog, which we also noted Monday. From the Post:

The bathrooms, clogged and overflowing since Monday, announced the second level of hell, the walkway ringing the entrance level. In the men's, the urinal troughs were overflowing. In the women's, the bowls were to the brim. A slime of excrement and urine made the walkway slick. "You don't even go there anymore," said Dee Ford, 37, who was pushed in a wading pool from her flooded house to the shelter. "You just go somewhere in a corner where you can. In the dark, you are going to step in poo anyway."

Water and electricity both failed Monday, and three pumps to pressurize plumbing have been no match "when the lake just keeps pushing it back at us," said Maj. Ed Bush, the chief public affairs officer for the Louisiana National Guard.

"With no hand-washing, and all the excrement," said Sgt. Debra Williams, who was staffing the infirmary in the adjacent sports arena, "you have about four days until dysentery sets in. And it's been four days today." . . .

"This is mass chaos," said Sgt. Jason Defess, 27, a National Guard military policeman who had been stationed on a ramp outside the Superdome since Monday. "To tell you the truth, I'd rather be in Iraq," where he was deployed for 14 months, until January. "You got your constant danger, but I had something to protect myself. [And] three meals a day. Communications. A plan. Here, they had no plan."

The Associated Press reported this morning that the Superdome had "descended into chaos":

Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door--a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.

Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation.

Superdome denizens are being moved by bus to a dry-land stadium, the Houston Astrodome. But helicopters transporting the sick "suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter," the AP reports.

The Angry Left and the Looters
On Tuesday we noted that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had responded to Katrina with a snarky Puffington Host post suggesting that the hurricane spared New Orleans because Mississippi's Gov. Haley Barbour is a Republican who disagrees with Kennedy's environmental ideas. His post now ends as follows:

[UPDATE: Alas, the reprieve for New Orleans was only temporary. But Haley Barbour still has much to answer for.]

Other members of the Angry Left are taking shots at President Bush:

• Cindy Sheehan: "George is finished playing golf and telling his fables in San Diego, so he will be heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused."
  
  
• Josh Marshall: "I know we're supposed to be observing an accountability free moment for the president. But there are just too many examples out there of the ways in which his policies have contributed to and accentuated this crisis. . . . No more letting this man's failures become his own argument against accountability. It's always been a live-for-today presidency."
  
  
• Andrew Sullivan: "Blaming Bush and the war for the poor state of New Orleans' levees is a legitimate argument. And it could be a crushing one."
  
  
• Molly Ivins: "Does this mean we should blame President Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Category 3 or Category 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under."
  
  
• New York Times editorial: "George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. . . . Since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal." (The Alenda Lux blog has an excellent dissection of this editorial.)

Last year, when hurricane Charley struck Florida, the complaint was that Bush was too responsive. "Even before the storm hit, the president declared four counties disaster areas to speed federal money to victims," CBS News reported a year ago. "But that quick response fueled suspicion that he is using disaster politics to help his campaign in one of the most critical battleground states."

Some people respond to a horrific natural disaster by taking cheap shots at their political opponents. Others respond by stealing TV sets. The underlying impulse knows no boundaries of social class.

Helf Wanted?
Several readers, still smarting over a European U.N. official's calling America "stingy" after the December tsunami, have written us to ask if any help is on the way from European leaders who've criticized the U.S. We can't speak for anyone else, but the Germans are positively desperate to help. In the past three days we've received no fewer than three press releases on the subject from the German Embassy in Washington. The first, titled "Germany Prepared to Provide Assistance to US in Wake of Hurricane Katrina," arrived just before 10:30 yesterday morning:

Germany is prepared to provide the United States with technical assistance in coping with the massive devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. "If there are requests on the part of the Americans, then we will surely participate," German Interior Minister Otto Schily said on behalf of the German Government in an interview with Reuters TV today.

At 10:45 a.m. today came another release, "Chancellor Schröder: 'The citizens of the United States should know that Germany is truly and firmly at their side.' ":

Germany will do everything to organize assistance--from water treatment facilities to mobile shelters and more--if the US requests it, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said in remarks in Berlin today, September 1.

Sixty-one minutes later came "Foreign Minister Fischer: Germany Prepared to Do All That is Humanly Possible to Help the US":

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer today reiterated Germany's willingness to offer help in a phone call to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The German Government is prepared to do all that is humanly possible, Fischer told Rice. He assured her of Germany's solidarity with her American friends in such a difficult time. Secretary Rice thanked Foreign Minister Fischer. She said she would inform the President of Fischer's call and also emphasized that she would not hesitate to take him up on Germany's offer.

Well, hopefully America can make it without German help, but danke schön all the same.

Reuterville Body Count
Under the subheadline MILESTONE LOOMS, Reuters engages in a pointless and ghoulish bit of calculation:

In the nearly 2-1/2 years of the [Iraq] war, the average death toll for U.S. troops has been 2.1 per day. If that pace continues, the U.S. death toll would reach 2,000 in late October. U.S. military deaths still remain far below the total and rate of the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 U.S. troops died.

Also if this pace continues, the Iraq death toll will top Vietnam's in just 73 years, and every American now alive will have been killed in Iraq by the year 389543.

A Beautiful Friendship?
If you need cheering up after all the horrible news from the Gulf Coast, consider this Associated Press dispatch from Istanbul, Turkey:

The foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan, a Muslim country that has long taken a hard line against the Jewish state, met publicly for the first time Thursday, a diplomatic breakthrough that both ministers linked to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom hailed the meeting as an "historic first" and said that after the Gaza pullout, it was "time for all of the Muslim and Arab countries to reconsider their relations with Israel."

The Pakistanis were quick to emphasize that they have no plans of establishing normal relations with Israel. "That stage will come following progress toward the solution of the Palestinian problem," said Khursheed Kasuri, Shalom's counterpart.

But the AP notes that "the Arabic-language TV station Al-Jazeera has quoted [Pakistan's dictator, Gen. Pervez] Musharraf as calling [Israel's Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon a 'great soldier and courageous leader' after announcing his plan to end Israel's occupation of Gaza."

Spoiler Alert!
" 'Lord of the Rings' Dispute Settled"--headline, CNN.com, Aug. 31

What Would Big Highway Hogs Do Without Doron Levin?
"Big Highway Hogs Are Paying Price of $3 Gasoline: Doron Levin"--headline, Bloomberg News, Sept. 1

Busy Benedict

"Pope Tells Catholics to Multiply"--headline, Agence France-Presse, Sept. 1

"Pope Out a Year for Violating Substance Abuse Policy"--headline, ESPN.com, Aug. 31

"High School Notebook: Pope Attends Classes at Aliquippa"--headline, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 31

After Shouting 'F1!'
"Saved by a Computer Lifeguard"--headline, (London) Times, Sept. 1

That Must've Been Some Spicy Cider
"Scientist: Brazil Mulled an Atom Bomb"--headline, FoxNews.com, Aug. 30

A Minor Problem
The other day, the New York Times reported on a Nebraska couple, Matthew and Crystal Koso, who got married in May after he made her pregnant. Their daughter, Samara, was born last week and is apparently doing fine. Her father is in some trouble, however: Mr. Koso is charged with raping his wife.

Mr. Koso is 22, and Mrs. Koso is 14. The pair went to Kansas, where the law permits girls as young as 12 to wed with parental consent--a law the Times reports has Kansas' Gov. Kathleen Sebelius "embarrassed." She "has said she will propose a raise in the minimum age when the Legislature reconvenes in January," the Times adds.

In an editorial yesterday, the Times endorsed the proposal:

The Koso marriage is indeed legal, and that is the fault of the Kansas State Legislature, which should heed a call by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and raise the age as soon as it reconvenes in January. Kansas is not the only state that has failed to fix antiquated laws permitting 14-year-old boys to marry 12-year-old girls if the parents permit. . . .

The fact that parents are willing to go along with these unions does not make them right. Chances are that in most of these cases, as apparently happened with Mr. Koso's family, when the parents found out that a baby was on the way, they were eager for the child to be born to married parents. But neither parental nor state approval makes it right to tie a girl as young as 12 to another person in what is supposed to be a lifetime commitment.

Indeed. A 14-year-old is a child, far too young for something as serious as marriage. At that age, she should be focusing on childish things like playing with dolls, going to sock hops, and having abortions.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Chris Stetsko, Bob Krumm, Greg Nelson, Michael Zukerman, Steven Platzer, Edward Schulze, Chris Scibelli, Christopher Salogub, Andy Hefty, Mark Meyer, Glenn Bialik, Dan O'Shea, Greg Martine, Jared Silverman, David Shapero, Tom Burson, John Williamson, David Sobelman, Allen O'Donnell, Andrew Robinson, Richard Lyons, Ian Clark, Michael Segal and Greg Askins. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: All man's cunning can't defeat the fury of nature.
• Peggy Noonan: Hurricane Katrina, the good, the bad, the let's-shoot-them-now.
• Andy Kessler: Verizon takes on the city of Philadelphia, and I can't decide whom to root against.
• Steve Moore: The flat tax is an idea whose time has come--just not here.