Is this Baghdad, Louisiana?

I can remember when the US military disposed of Saddam’s Army in Baghdad and the mass looting of the city commenced. I didn’t know it at the time, because I was there in the middle of the chaos that the media was bashing the military for not stopping the looting of the city. At that time the looting was pretty bad, but not as bad as the media made it out to be and I remember thinking, do people expect us to arrest and shoot people in the middle of a war for loading up a sofa in the back of their truck?

Watching TV today I couldn’t help but think how did people expect us to stop looting in Baghdad when we can’t even stop looting in New Orleans? So it is with a sense of irony that I watch the same media that was bashing the Army during the war is now bashing the New Orleans police department and Louisiana National Guard for not stopping the looters.

I tend to look at this realistically. The New Orleans policemen all had homes and families to were wiped out by the hurricane. Do you think the police is going to tell their families to sit on top of their house’s roof while they go off and stop people from stealing TVs. Plus the police had few vehicles to use to patrol with because their police cars were under water just like everyone elses. It is the same story with the National Guard. The guard is composed of the same community swamped by the hurricane.

It is going to take time to get the police and National Guard organized in this situation. Nobody has a perfect plan to deal with something like this and the media tends to blow every rumor way out of proportion and treat them as fact. They did the same thing in Baghdad. Yes, there was looting going on but it wasn’t as bad as the media made it out to be. I foresee the same thing in New Orleans. So please give the authorities in Louisiana the benefit of the doubt because I am sure they are trying their best to preserve order and save lives.

What I find most interesting about this is that when social controls are removed from a society, people begin to react to their most basic instincts of survival of the fittest. We saw it in Baghdad and now you have seen it in New Orleans. What I wonder is what would happen if Seoul had a catastrophic natural disaster similar to New Orleans? What would the people’s reaction be? Would they begin looting? Would gangs begin to rove and car jack people? Would rapes occur? Does anybody think that Koreans would not also act similar if all social controls were removed? If not what do you think makes Koreans different?