under the sea

It's a little cold, but this letter to Mark Steyn gets it mostly right:

Following the disaster in New Orleans and being Dutch, I was amazed about the stupid remarks made by various politicians and so called professionals. The suggestion that New Orleans should not be rebuild, because it is 5 or 6 meters below sea level proves the professional nitwits haven’t seen much of the world. New Orleans has never been sufficiently protected. Would a team of engineers been in the Netherlands for one day, they would have noticed how 10 million Dutch citizens live between 10 and 3 meter below sea level for hundreds of years. A little historic update would have learned them that since 1953 (the last big catastrophe we suffered from inundation) the Dutch have constantly improved the techniques of building bigger and more reliable dykes.

All inundations in our past history (or near inundations) were caused by a lack of funding, lack of maintenance and idiots in green parties who delayed the reconstruction of old dykes. In New Orleans I see incompetence, lack of funding, lack of interest. Après moi le déluge. A storm with gale forces like 150 miles an hour is a bad thing. Bad governors and inept engineers are worse. I advise the proper US institutions to make an appointment with our dyke builders and research institutes before they start building lousy dykes again. I am sure they will be welcomed with open arms. We have not forgotten how the US helped us with helicopters and food aid, when our dykes broke in 1953 killing 2500 people and inundating an area at least 10 times the size of New Orleans with a few million people and causing millions of dead animals. This area is a life and kicking now. New Orleans will be too, but first needs to kick out all inept politicians.

Barend Hak
The Netherlands, living 20 feet below sea level

Of course, the major reason they built their system of dykes was to add more land because there was nowhere else to go in Europe - which is a problem we don't have over here.

Mark also asks the question:

On 9/11, they stuck to the 30-year-old plan; last week, they didn't bother implementing the state-of-the-art 21st-century plan. Why argue about which level of bureaucracy you prefer to be let down by?

update: Also read this summary at the Washington Times.