The blame game
Mary Madigan
According to this CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 38 percent of Americans polled believe that "no one" is to blame for the problems in the city following the hurricane.
25 percent blamed state or local officials. 18 percent blamed federal agencies and 13 percent said Bush.
If they did a blame-game poll of journalists, especially of journalists who work for the International branches of US publications like the New York Times, I wonder what the results would be?
In related news, individual Americans and the American corporations that Europeans love to hate have already contributed well over 400 million dollars towards aid for Katrina's victims - and that number keeps going up.
The fact that they've been somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the disaster, which is the largest and more severe FEMA has ever faced in its entire existence, also seems to be consistently overplayed in order to make their response look like massive incompetence.
It's starting to get disturbing.
You're right; it is disturbing. I feel like I'm standing in front of 1000's of screaming, hysterical people and have an urge to slap and shake every single one of 'em.
Oh wait, that's only in Iraq.
Besides, you can't really tell what the outcome would have been had everyone done everything absolutely correct. It could have made a big difference, or it could have made no difference. I honestly don't know. For example, if the mayor had ordered the evacuation and offered up those school buses as transportation to anyone who needed it, would anyone have taken him up on the offer? How many?
The "Comander in Chief" is responsible for caring for the good of the people (yes, even the poor black ones). He has at his command the armed forces, FEMA, homeland security, the national guard and the coast guard. None disputes his ability or authority to mobilize them in times of need. He failed to do so. Period.
With the exception of the national guard which is under the governors' command, every one of the forces you mention were mobilized BEFORE the storm. Bush can order them in, but he can't do their job for them.
Dean-
Only 400 million so far? We've been outdone by Kuwait then. Those oil countries sure want to have a place to ship their oil to, I guess.
None disputes his ability or authority to mobilize them in times of need.
But he can only send them in after the disaster.
The "Comander in Chief" is responsible for caring for the good of the people (yes, even the poor black ones).
First, Bush doesn't hate black people so let's just put that idiocy away. Second, I'm not sure the president is responsible for "caring" about anything. He's there to do a job. If he does things right, I don't really care how much he "cares". And if he does things wrong, all the "caring" in the world is meaningless.
That was just a perfect comment, the like of which has rarely been seen here in Dean's World, surpassed only by the works of Arnold Harris. I rarely do so well myself. And I wish my name was Reginald Firehammer. I would be a better man.
"No administration could credibly investigate such an immense failure on its own watch. And we have learned through bitter experience - the Abu Ghraib nightmare is just one example - that when this administration begins an internal investigation, it means a whitewash in which no one important is held accountable and no real change occurs."
"Mr. Bush signaled yesterday that we are in for more of the same when he sneered and said, "One of the things that people want us to do here is to play a blame game." This is not a game. It is critical to know what "things went wrong," as Mr. Bush put it. But we also need to know which officials failed - not to humiliate them, but to replace them with competent people."
:::
Yeah, right, they're not trying to (Abu Gharaib!) humiliate or blame the (sneering!) Bush for everything (whitewash! whitewash!)
Yellow journalism is back with a vengeance - maybe it never went away.
In point of fact, more forces were mobilized in advance of this hurricane than others. The claim that they failed to mobilize is simply false. We just had the biggest national disaster in generations, maybe the biggest of all time, and all they can do is complain that FEMA acted faster and with more force than it ever has before, but it wasn't good enough. Love how they throw in the race-baiting comments too. Lovely.
The critics would have more credibility if they were on record in advance with suggested reforms. They weren't anywhere--indeed, the New York Times was bashing the Bush administration last year for spending too much on projects that would have helped New Orleans. Now they have no constructive suggestions at all, except to demand the heads of administrators who not only did their jobs, but did more than their jobs required. Absurd.
If these were good faith criticisms they'd have specific proposals. As usual, they have none. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to give up writing about politics.
Any disaster is going to have horrors. And every unfair deal need not be rectified if there are greater dangers that still need to be confronted.
I'd be pretty pissed if a rescue boat passed me by, even if it was going to evacuate a neonatal ward. But life is sometimes just like that.
Mind you, you'd think it would be easy. I'm one of the only people I know who questions people's patriotism. I do it fairly often. But I never do it simply for criticizing the administration. The one time I came close to doing that I immediately retracted and apologized.
So when and where has anyone had their patriotism questioned simply for criticizing the administration? Can I have some examples with links please?
The US Coast Guard was on the job during the hurricane! They pulled the crew off of a sinking fishing boat. It's their job, and they were rescuing people as soon as they could.
They don't sit around waiting for a call from the White House to get moving. They have standing orders and they implemented them.
Thank you for slandering a gallant service in your rage against the administration.
In nearly every poll I've seen since 9/11 a hard 20% of all respondents blame Bush for anything and everything. Sometimes that percentage goes up to 25% but I don't think I've ever seen it below 20%.
That's pretty interesting.
That 13% category was "sole blame". Some of the other categories include President Bush.
So yes, this poll is probably only revealing the same 20% who hated President Bush before the hurricane hate him after the hurricane. After all, the reporters filing all the anti-Bush hurricane stories are mostly the same ones who filed anti-Bush Cindy Sheehan stories, anti-Bush Iraq War stories, anti-Bush Killian memo stories, etc., etc., etc.
In terms of public opinion, this hurricane is just another lever on which the Bush haters futilely push.
I don't have specific suggestions as to how to fix it, because it's not an area I have any particular expertise in, and because I don't understand completely what went wrong. But I'm stunned at the fact that it took *four days* to get food and water into New Orleans, and i'm stunned at the fact that it took an equivalent amount of time to start evacuating the refugees.
That wasn't an acceptable performance. I think it's too early to pick up and point fingers at particular people, nor am I sure that it's productive - I think it's an overall procedural problem rather than the result of any particular individual's misdeeds. But it needs to be looked at, and it needs to be fixed, because *every one of our lives* may depend on it.
The reason I said it was interesting is that, yes, it is just another lever which the Bush haters futilely push, but perhaps they've pushed the lever so much it isn't working anymore?
My favorite phrase is the media who cried Hitler. They have little or no credibility where Bush is concerned considering all the gossamer scandals and faux polls. As I wrote over at Tim Blair's site today, and elsewhere before, Bush could be found with both a dead boy and a live woman in his bed, hell, throw in a chicken, and most of the country would yawn and say, "The liberal media is at it again."
I also figure as the MSM sees their influence dropping, they'll get more shrill and Bush-hatey thus dropping their credibility thus increasing their shrillness and Bush-hatingness thus.....
So after a week of relentlessly negative coverage, to see only 13% of the people buy into the Bush hatred shows that maybe, just maybe, BDS is now counter-productive.
That, or the Bush haters were hiding under their beds hoping Karl Rove isn't sending a hurricane to get them.
Personally, I wasn't too happy with the federal response, or their leadership. This disaster required an effort above and beyond the stated rules. They didn't put in the effort. I've become disappointed in any Republican politican whose name isn't Rudy Giuliani.
I had lunch with my Democratic, very left-leaning, New York Times-reading parents, and they were arguing that the Democrats in New Orleans were mostly to blame. They mentioned the unused school busses, they complained about the corruption, the waste of federal money that should have been used to fix the levees. My Francophile parents also blamed the corruption in Louisiana on the French.
It was a very strange lunch. I wonder if other people are feeling the same way. That might explain the reduced number of Bush haters in the polls...?
From that perspective, FOUR DAYS isn't that bad, especially when you consider that 72-96 hours is the standard quoted time for federal resources to have an effect.
If that isn't acceptable to you, then wave your magic wand, or join the organization and fix it. Or: lead, follow, or get out of the way. If you like, I'll try and backtrack to those websites with quotes from people who do this for a living.
That said, there are legitimate grounds for criticism of specific people and events, even outside of the local debacle. Even John of Arrgggh! (who used to do this for a living) has some critical words for the feds. I'm putting up some of the details here.
Now that I've had a chance to look at your last post, after my own, "fracking dolt" seems rather harsh.
While I still think hyperventilating over a four-day gap is definitely over the top, there is very much room for criticsm and improvement.
At least, if we can avoid the fatuity of "IT'S ALL BUSHES FAULT!!!," anyway.
It is not -in my view- the delay which is so bad, as some of the unmitigated stupidity of the after-the-fact, bureaucratic nitwittery.
It seems eliminating (local-based) Civilian Defense was the first mistake, then creating FEMA (on the dead body of CD) was the second, while folding FEMA into the Department of Fatherland (er, Homeland) Defense made it that much worse.
Three layers of bureaucracy is never a good idea.