MAGIC NUMBER

James Wolcott dearly hopes Katrina's death toll exceeds 3,000:

Casualty figures are often high-ranged at the outset, dropping as the smoke and water clears. But any number substantially higher than 3,000 dead presents a political and symbolic dilemma for the most avid advocates of the War on Terror (or World War IV, if you're a Norman Podhoretz devotee). It may seem cold and inhuman to apply a political calculus to casualty figures. Every death is an individual tragedy with a radius sorrow extending to friends, family, and coworkers--no one's life should be reduced to a digit. But it foolhardy to ignore how the death toll (high or low) will be spun by conservatives, who have already begun twirling their tops.

Here's why they're in spin mode. Since 9/11, "3000" has been elevated to a sacred, symbolic number in political discourse. It has been the solemn chord struck again and again by Donald Rumsfeld at his press briefings and public addresses--"It's important to keep in mind that the civilized world passed the 1,000th casualty mark at the hands of extremists long ago; I mean, 3,000 on September 11th alone"--and a recurring talking point to justify the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It has provided the grim refrain Victor Davis Hanson has gonged in column after column to lend greater reverberation to his preachings from the ramparts...

But now that the death toll from Katrina is threatening the inviolable aura of "3000 dead," rightwingers are playing their own form of hopscotch to put things in "proper perspective." They recognize they're in danger of losing a mass grave marker on the high moral ground.

Wolcott can't grasp that there's a big difference between thousand being murdered and thousands killed by an act of God. It's just not possible to compare the two but that doesn't stop him trying:

For Hurricane Katrina has broken the post 9/11 spell that held everyone in thrall to terrorism and terrorism alone as the paramount menace on the horizon. (Compare the lyrical emoting Peggy Noonan has done since 9/11 with her dry, chapped response to Katrina.) Whatever the final numbers are from Hurricane Katrina, it will be harder for the WOT propagandists to ritualistically invoke the "3000 dead" to the same sonorous effect. Those deaths have reached their expiration date, not for mourning, but for political, cultural, and military exploitation. Here we are coming up to the 4th anniversary of that horrible day, and Ground Zero still lacks a memorial or even a palatable design, Osama Bin Laden is unapprehended, Iraq is a vale of tears, and a dorky "Freedom March" is being staged in Washington. One can only hope that the dead of New Orleans receive a more decent and deserving memorialization than the dead of 9/11 have gotten.

Quite a little points scoring package Wolcott has here, isn't it? Lefties know no shame.