The Blame Game II

Have just been over to Tim Dunlop for my daily does of senseless vitriol. Aussie Bob is in full flight proving once and for all that no amount of facts will ever dissuade him and his kind from blaming Bush or Howard for perceived ills in our society. Bob writes:

Imagine if Bush had gotten that bull horn of his (surely there’s one on AF-1), or even gone on TV before Katrina and said “Get out now!”. Like, just after the disaster was declared on the Friday before the storm. He’d have been an effing hero. But that was too easy… No… he went a strummin’.

Well Bob, you can imagine it. In fact you can do more than that, you can actually read about how Bush got on the horn and tried to get the Loiusiana Governor to order an evacuation and call for federal help well before Katrina landed. She stonewalled and that hesitation added to the long list of stuff-ups. You can read about it Bob but I know you wont so I won’t even post a link. The Blame Game doesn’t have any rules and facts are to be ignored. Like most western societies there are laid down procedures for the US central government to adhere to prior to sending in the cavalry. The US laws do not allow the Federal government to just send in the troops, to order evacuations or to abitrarily impose Military Law. The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies belongs to local and state officials who are charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his emergency operations center. When the local authorities decide that the emergency is beyond their capabilities then a procedure exists to call for help. This procedure exists in Australia and we in the military call it Aid to the Civil Power. Well, we did in my time, whatever, the proceure will still exist. I’m not trying to exhonerate the US Federal authorities. On the face of it the system didn’t work with suffient alacrity to match the size of the disaster and I’m sure subsequent investigations will improve on procedures and that, I might add, should be the aim of any investigation. It should not be an avenue for vested interests to allocate blame against their political foe. Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagi have a lot of explaining to do as well but I note little critical assessment of their involvement in the tragedy outide of blogs. Has anyone else noticed the presence of USN hospital and logistic ships now providing support in the disaster area and thought to ask themselves how many days sailing did it take to position these ships. I can assure you that ships of this size still have no “Beam me to NO, Scotty” facilities and thus would have had to have been put on notice well before the event. I imagine this will be ignored along with the fact that even though the US has only 10% of the military in Iraq, detracters still believe that the US involvement in Iraq is part of the reason that troops were slow to get into the area and therefore this can be sheeted home to Bush as well. Fine – call the federal agencies to task. They are after all, a part of the procedure, but in doing so look to the local agencies in the state and city administration as well. They too are a part of the procedure even if they are Democrats.