When Sichuan looks like Iraq…

You can see video of it on television or on the internet over and over, or you can read about it in newspapers and magazines, but seeing the destruction of a few these so called “Tofu” schools in Sichuan province over the past few days has been mind numbing. That’s particularly true for the one in Dujiangyan, closest to Chengdu, which has got so much (justified) attention. That pulverized lot, surrounded by buildings on all sides that still stand, looks like nothing less than a school that got blown up by `precise’ 21st century munitions—a laser guided missile, or a JDAM—NOT by the primeval, indiscriminate lethality of an earthquake. It looks like something out of el-Anbar province in Iraq, not Sichuan province in China. Extraordinary. And extraordinarily depressing. No high tech bomber did this. This is the result of what Willie Stark , the fictional, depression era, populist governor of Louisiana (in All The King’s Men) called “politics’ rotted brick…”
One of the volunteers in the region, who yesterday went for the first time to visit the site, kept saying to us: “I can’t imagine how pissed off those parents (of the dead children) must be…”
And how.