Sir, I disagree with Martin Samuel’s contention (Comment, September 6) that “the breakdown of society witnessed in New Orleans” could occur elsewhere in the US because of the “economic apartheid” inflicted on American cities.

New Orleans is the most corrupt city in the most corrupt state in the Union, a situation with roots in its early status as a French colony and still uncorrected after two centuries. The state is run as a plantation with taxpayers as its cash crop.

The social results, in normal times, are abject poverty, rampant graft, lack of native industry and the slow, easygoing “Mediterranean” feel so prized by tourists. In times of disaster it leads to the complete collapse that we have witnessed.

No such situation exists elsewhere in the country, not even in the most venal political districts. Nowhere else is corruption so pervasive or so limitless; nowhere else is the political climate so undemocratic.

Mississippi shares many features with Louisiana, including widespread poverty, lagging development and a large black population. But it also possesses a healthy sense of community, a political structure based on American precedents and an experienced governor.

Although hit as hard as its neighbor, Mississippi is fighting its way back while Louisiana turns into Somalia. I have yet to see a single Mississippi politician sobbing, cursing, or bellowing threats into a microphone.

J. R. DUNN
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

From Sir Peter Smithers

Sir, I was at the British Embassy in Washington at the time of Pearl Harbor, a cataclysmic failure of the US governmental structure under President Roosevelt. It was my duty to read and relay the US intercepts of Japanese messages deciphered by US codebreakers.

When a message directed the Japanese Ambassador to seek an interview with the Secretary of State at one o’clock precisely on the following Sunday it was obvious that this was when minimum staff would be on duty to handle an ultimatum. This intercept was forwarded separately by the Army and Navy to their staffs in Hawaii.

Did the general and the admiral concerned meet to discuss their dispositions? Not at all. One of them went to play golf and the other did something else.

FDR was an able and courageous President, but interdepartmental jealousies in the administrative structure prevented him from having the accurate overall view which he needed.

Organs of the US Government still seem to spend more time fighting one another for turf than fighting the enemies of today: terrorists and a dangerously unstable world weather system. Where FDR failed it is not surprising if President Bush did likewise. The public should demand radical structural changes to protect them from failures of policy.

PETER SMITHERS
Vico Morcote, Switzerland

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