Not to cross into normally avoided territory, but I've been defending our current administration for the last week or so in light of the fact that Katrina caught the nation with pants encircling ankles. Many conversations have sprouted up, and many fires have started. Not necessarily here in this forum (although I sure see it in a lot of places!), but with this on my mind, I figured I'd get it into words, so I can look back on it later.
Post 9/11, it was realized that no one truly had the power to respond to an attack here on our own soil. The Office of Homeland Security was originally the White House itself, and afterwards, a new department was spun off, to establish a structure specifically to deal with events of that nature. At this point, Bush II appointed Tom Ridge to head up this new organization, but it was quickly pointed out that Mr. Ridge didn't have control of the resources he would need to mobilize in the event of a national crisis. Ergo, Joseph Liberman (the first instance I can find in my search) suggested that those agencies be merged with DHS. Initially, the Bush administration resisted this idea, but later on, after Congress passed the Homeland Security act of 2003, Bush aceded, and signed this into law. So far, great idea on paper. However, within DHS, the mandate was perceived to focus on terrorist activity. The best reason I can find for incorporating FEMA into DHS was the idea that any sort of disaster would have similar recovery actions. But that's not what happened. FEMA was internally split by the DHS, leaving behind the response capabilites, but not the preventive structure that was the other half of FEMA.
Now, I still feel that the largest part of the blame goes to the government in Louisiana, as well as New Orleans itself (and yes, Mississippi too). The federal government has normally advised local infrastructure to be prepared to wait as long as 72 hours for assistance in the event of an emergency. However, I do recognize that the wrong people are in the job, and those people were in fact appointed by the President. I do question the wisdom of immediately firing them, however. Simply put, wouldn't it cost even more lives to bring a new leadership up to speed?
As far as I'm know, the executive branch is in charge of ensuring that the law is followed. If a law doesn't exist, then the executive branch is largely powerless, especially when these things happen on our home soil. Yes, some decisions were made that did not take an event of this magnitude into consideration. Yes, hindsight is 20/20. But I do remember a large public outcry post 9/11 about "Why did we let this happen?". DHS is what it is because of that outcry. Should it have restructured faster? I believe so... Could it have? I have no idea.
I however will not pass the blame upwards to lie on any large part on the President of the United States. Lots of things broke here. Lots of people made mistakes. I certainly hope that we learn from them. But seriously, people... if you just have to get angry about something? Get angry at the big picture... don't ratchet down your focus to a single point because it's easier to pick at.
This just happened on the other side of the world. They learned from it, and they moved on. They didn't point fingers, drag out soapboxes, or run smear campaigns. They cleaned up the mess, improved their chances of weathering a similar event, and they
moved on.
And we like to think we're so mature, and civilized...
