A Detailed Look Into Blame.

I am going to try and discredit the myth being told by the right regarding
the response of last week’s disaster.

Seems like there is an enormous effort out there to take all blame from the
President, yet put blame on the Mayor. Well those right-wing spinners need to
realize they both have blame to take. They both have blame to accept for what
failed under their control.

Let me set up a hypothetical scenario in order to prove my point.

Your house catches on fire. You call the fire department and they respond. It
takes them longer than you expect. Once they get there the handling of the fire
is like something you would see out of a Three Stooge’s movie. They can’t get
water to the fire without an enormous delay, they can not go inside for an
attack because air packs are not there yet, nor can they ventilate the roof
because they do not have ladders yet. To make matters even worse in our little
scenario, the firefighters are saying they need help from another department,
because you live in a nice big house. It takes the Chief to make that mutual aid
call, but he is seriously debating about it while your house continues to burn.

After the fire, and the loss of all your possessions, you start asking
questions. You find out that the new fire chief your city has hired has no prior
fire fighting experience. Actually it turns out that he oversaw the judges for
some international dog show. Man this makes you mad. What can you do to demand
answers for this major screw up that smells of total incompetence? Who do you
blame for this disaster that has cost you everything you own? You decide to take
it up with your town council and find out that the city manager was in fact the
person who hired this chief. Now wouldn’t you be sitting there demanding the
city manager either be disciplined or fired? Of course you would. His pure
ignorance to look into the credentials of someone hired to protect your life and
property merits that.

Now back from the land of hypothetical scenarios. You read that and realize
that its not really so hypothetical, just changed around to match a situation
you would find on the local level.

The whole point is that city manager is responsible for the actions of the
departments under him, the same way the President is responsible for the
departments under him. To further illustrate, I want to give you a table that
compares the chain of administrative command between local and federal agencies.

I put the word city manager in there, but that is dependent on the form of
local government. Some have a mayor who is in charge of day to day operations,
and some have a city manager who is while the mayor acts more along the lines as
a president to the city council.

As you look at that table, you realize that blaming mayor Ray Nagin for the
failures and not giving the President any blame is totally inappropriate. If the
President is not to blame for FEMA’s failures, then how can you blame the Mayor
for failures involving his police and fire departments? The fact is they both
have the same oversight of their respective departments.

I hope this helps clear up the myth being spun out there that the President
is innocent of all blame, while the Mayor is to blame. The truth of the matter
is, they both are. The decisions into the level of blame are dependent upon the
actual problems that faced each agency and their respective responses to it.

The fire and police department were overstretched beyond imagination. FEMA
was also overstretched but not near the level that local authorities were. The
police and fire departments in New Orleans faced numerous obstacles including;
loss of personal to either fleeing or quitting, loss of vehicles to flooding and
loss of an infrastructure. When that happens in the wake of a disaster, then it
is time for state and federal officials to come in and pick up the slack. Don’t
forget to that the state was overwhelmed considering New Orleans was not the
only area affected by the hurricane.

President Bush has admitted that the response was “unacceptable”. By
admitting that, he is admitting to failures under his own command and should
either correct the failures or be prepared to answer for them. While people are
searching for answers into what went wrong, the President seems to be ignoring
the fact that FEMA is under his command and the failures into that are also
failures into his administration. Further more, the right is into full swing to
try and spin the blame and what went wrong and take it off of the President.

What happened last week is not a question of partisan politics. It is a
question of the ability of our government to respond in the wake of a disaster,
either natural or man made. We saw this operation fail last week and this week
we need to start correcting it. Investigating these failures in a way that is
partisan will yield answers that favor certain parties while criticizing others.
The only answers we can find must come from a non-partisan committee, similar to
the 9/11 commission. The Republicans say we do not need partisan politics at
this time. For once I totally agree, so will the Republicans please stop making
it partisan.