Baghdad on the Bayou

NBC's Martin Savidge, the network's intrepid Man in New Orleans, reported Tuesday on the latest outrage in the City That We Forgot:

Since Friday, eight people have been murdered in New Orleans despite the addition of National Guard troops, state police and Federal agents. And the killing is done at point-blank range in broad daylight, leaving neighborhoods fearful and police frustrated.

What amazes even federal investigators about New Orleans crime isn't the violence, but the silence.

"A comment from an FBI agent today is that they can't believe that citizens won't say anything," New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley says.

Four men were killed Monday alone, bringing the number of murders in the city so far this year to 53. That compares to just 17 for the same period last year. Yet police are frustrated by crime scene after crime scene where many people watch but nobody talks.

"These aren't random incidents," Riley says.

Authorities say drugs and revenge motivate much of the killing.

"Enough has been enough," says Rev. Robert Brown.

Some suggest desperate Hurricane Katrina survivors are turning to drug trafficking for income.

"Of course it's going to get worse until they treat poor people better," Brown says.

But University of New Orleans criminologist Peter Scharf says the answer may be much more complicated, and so far has eluded even a beefed-up federal presence.

"Things that everyone thought would work, didn't," Scharf says.

HERE'S THE DEAL, and maybe this will make you (and George Bush) give a . . . darn about the city that was dying before the Corps of Engineers drowned it: At some point, even the hard-core gangstas and other horribly desperate people of "Da Slums a Noo Orluns" will come to themselves -- probably -- and will figure that there has to be more than this crap.

That life must have some meaning somewhere, somehow.

In our previous civilizational operating paradigm, these folks would come to Jesus and there would be a revival, and there would be hope. But as is happening increasingly in our overcrowded prisons -- and is made a more certain bet by the Christian church's embrace of relevance at the expense of Jesus Christ (Remember Him?) -- these desperate folk one day might find meaning and worth in Allah and his messenger, Mohammed.

And the imams who show them the way may not be "peace-loving Muslims" at all. They may be radical Wahabbist, kill-em-all-and-let-Allah-sort-'em-out Muslims.

And we will have Trouble, right here in River City!

With a capital "T"

That rhymes with "B"

And that stands for BOOM!

I'm just sayin'.