2005: Year marked by natural and political storms

The Germans have a term that fits tidily over the events of the just-ended year: Sturm und Drang, "storm and stress."

Storms aplenty raged in 2005. Nature spawned some: Hurricane Katrina, for example, and its follow-up, Hurricane Rita.

Others were manmade: An increasingly loud debate over the U.S. presence in Iraq. . . . Squabbles over Supreme Court nominees. . . . Such Washington misdeeds as a CIA leak and ethical question marks over members of Congress . . .

Even when storms abated, stress persisted. For example, the specter of an avian flu pandemic loomed like a dark line of clouds of the horizon. Energy prices ticked upward, even as the winter heating season approached.

And with snow already on the ground in the mountains of Afghanistan, uncounted thousands who lost their homes to an earthquake scrambled to find shelter.

Here and there, bits of sunshine broke through. The Syrian army pulled out of Lebanon. Israel gave the Palestinians the title deeds to the Gaza Strip. And Iraqis went to the polls three times to cast ballots in fair and open elections.

But overall, Sturm und Drang prevailed. Much of it dogged President Bush, whose second-term honeymoon — if there was one — washed away in August.

In retrospect, New Orleans seems like a natural disaster waiting to happen. Most of the city sits below sea level, just inland from the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast.

On Aug. 29, the disaster struck. At first, the Big Easy seemed to have dodged the bullet, again. But then levees collapsed, followed by civilization.

The cable news networks dropped their obsession with an Alabama teenager missing in Aruba. They flocked to New Orleans to broadcast the misery non-stop. Viewers winced at the Third World level of suffering.

Victims angrily demanded to know when help would arrive. Government at all levels — local, state and federal — lagged in responding. In the end, FEMA's chief resigned in disgrace.

Katrina took more than 1,300 lives in Louisiana and neighboring states. The storm largely depopulated an American metropolis. In its wake, it left large questions:

Will New Orleans be rebuilt? Should it be rebuilt? If so, who pays the bill?

If bureaucrats can't handle a hurricane, how could they deal with an attack by nuclear-armed terrorists?