Opportunity Costs: Iraq and Katrina

Radley Balko on Katrina:

The federal government has again failed at the one thing it's actually supposed to do: Protect us from outside threats. Perversely, this failure is the direct result of a fool's errand carried out in response to the massive failure of four years ago. Shoring up the levees and water pumps would have cost a mere $250 million, about a day-and-a-half of wartime operations in Iraq.

Sickening. Balko writes at the end of his post, "Now's not the time to score petty political points," but I don't see how mentioning the massive misallocation of tax dollars that left New Orleans defenseless is a petty political point. Who's scoring petty political points? I dunno – maybe Fox News anchors screeching that the French are enjoying our misery. Maybe another key Bush constituency proclaiming that New Orleans is suffering because God hates fags. (Surely you're not surprised by this group's allies.) But a frank discussion of the opportunity costs of imperialism? Under the current circumstances, only a nation of imbeciles would avoid it.