To the editor:

The Saturday Column was a tour de force of muddled thinking. Please consider the following:

1. We have spent billions on homeland security that clearly should have included plans for an urban catastrophe requiring the rapid evacuation of tens of thousands of citizens. Obviously, those in charge, including President Bush, failed to anticipate the full extent of homeland security problems. We paid in human lives.

2. The people in New Orleans largely did what they could do and what they were told to do. It is “ugly and unflattering” to blame the victims for their suffering.

3. Poor people are less able to help themselves than others are, and many Afro-Americans are poor, largely as a legacy of historical inequalities.

4. Many Americans responded and are responding heroically to this catastrophe. If only our political class had shown greater organization and leadership, the American people could have mobilized their resources more efficiently.

5. We all recognize the paramount importance of the war on terror, but most people also recognize that our government has been slow to understand the scope and complexity of the problem, just as it showed a belated understanding of the catastrophic potential of Katrina.

6. Federal neglect of New Orleans’ environmental problems helped undermine its security.

When our leaders lack foresight, our country will stumble from one problem to the next. The buck stops with our leaders.

Eric Smith,

Lawrence