The Fema Director lied on his resume;
President Bush was too busy with his war in Iraq;
New Orleans officials were too busy trying to keep minorities out of "The Big Easy";
The pumps failed;
The weather sucked;
Who, or what, is to blame? How can we sit here and blame anyone person? It seems to me that there was a lot of crap going on. How do you prioritize something like what happened? How can you say that President Bush could have done something sooner? Would money have solved the problem? Would money have prevented the devastation?
The biggest argument that comes to pass is with the issue of "time." People ask, why did it take so long to send in help? My favorite comment is: "If they were white it wouldn't have taken so much time to get help." Here is the thing. NO ONE knew how bad it was going to get. NO ONE knew that the supporting was going to begin to fall apart under the stress of the storm. NO ONE knew that New Orleans would have faced so much devastation. After the storm was over, help was sent in...but not as quick as some would have liked. But this is reality. There is red tape. As much as was needed to help in the disaster was not available at any one persons fingertips. President Bush does not have the resources to fix the problem himself - Separation of Powers prevents him from doing so.
Who is to blame? NO ONE! This is nothing that could have been prevented. When looked at afterwards should it have been handled differently? Sure...there are millions of ways that it could have been. But to say that people intentionally or maliciously did this - that is just silly. When is the last time before the disaster that you went to New Orleans to offer assistance "just in case" the town flooded? Then you are just as much to blame!
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6 comments:
James,
You are full of shit on this. The area in question was considered to be in a state of emergency prior to the levy breaking and there was no effort to send people in ahead of the storm to get things in order. This would have given ample time to cut red tape. The Homeland Securty dept. was created to institutionally cut red tape when help is needed and the first, and only, time they were needed they dropped the ball. Shame on Mr. Bush, shame on his entire administation, and shame on you for giving them a pass.
I think saying you can't blame anyone is just as simplistic as blaming particular people. There was a large area of failure here, but fundamentally, the government knew that New Orleans was in the line of fire and didn't send anyone ahead of time to help. No one bussed the poor people out because they couldn't afford to leave themselves. And Bush stayed on vacay for two days after levees collapsed before he came back. He ended his vacay immedietly when Elizabeth Schiavo was on the line.
Besides being full of shit, I think that you should understand that I am not suggesting that anyone should get a pass. I am merely saying that to blame this one one person is totally insane!
If anything, this has been screwed up from the beginning. It was handled like crap since the start. The city of New Orleans knew that the people in the city were not capible of getting out of the town - so they opened the Super Dome. The Department of Homeland Security, no matter how ill managed and run it is, cannot be blammed for everything. You cannot blame them for the poverty in New Orleans that was not created by them. If anyone is to "blame" it is the New Orleans officials - they created this situation.
I guess maybe President Bush could have sent in Airforce 1 to get the people out of there.
What Mr B. said ... plus I would add shame on the governor and the mayor too. But in the end, the buck stops at the president for appointing his cronies instead of qualified and competent people in FEMA. I just saw that Mike Brown has been recalled to Washington by Chertoff. It is about time someone finally got that idiot out of there, before he does any more damage.
Jamie,
I ment full of shit in the nicest possible way.
YOu are correct in that there were balls dropped by every player on the team from the lowliest person up. But someone should stand up and own the issue. As I learned early on, it is better to screw up and say so and deal with the screw up instead of trying to uncover who screwed up.
At this point, Bush should say is was him because he is in charge so the problem can be fixed. By avoiding blame, he detracts form fixing the problem, which creates another problem.
Her name was Terri Schiavo. :)
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