Katrina-Related Misdeeds and Incompetence by the Administration?
On the one hand, I don't like those who simply look for reasons to criticize the administration. (There are, after all, so many legitimate reasons to do so.) Furthermore, I have some inclination to think that our attention should be on the disaster rather than politics.
On the other hand, it's not like people like me can actually do anything about this (other than giving money, which doesn't actually take up time or energy). So trying to say something true about the administration's response seems like a reasonable undertaking.
First let me say that laypeople like me don't know much of anything about how difficult such operations are and how they normally proceed. So our judgments should be tentative at this point.
However, I must say that I would never have guessed that our response to a disaster like this would be so sluggish and anemic. Although I am under the impression that such operations are more difficult than many people think, and I would never expect the government to take care of a problem of this magnitude anything like overnight, I've been surprised and alarmed by how half-hearted and inefficient our response has seemed. Surprised and alarmed enough that I've resolved to tuck away some extra extra water and granola bars in case anything similar ever happens around these parts.
Again: having no real understanding of these matters, my expectations may simply have been wildly unrealistic, but Kevin Drum reports passes on some info that seems to support my impressions.
I don't want to sing the same note over and over, but I can't help being reminded of the early stages of military action in Afghanistan, up to and including the Tora Bora debacle: our response seems to be timid, half-hearted, and proceeding at half speed. And that does not seem to be the fault of the yeomen on the ground.
[Addendum: An Instapundit reader says that FEMA advises local governments not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours after a disaster. This gives us some objective touchstone for evaluating the administration's response.]
[Some comments on this post at Centerfield are interesting, including some of the more restrained parts of Tully's. Centerfield, incidentally, is one of the saner parts of the 'sphere.]
[Reuters pulls few punches, referencing the administration's "botched" rescue efforts, it's attempts to shift blame, and Bush's "rare admission of error".]
[Die-hard knee-jerk Bush partisan David Frum possibly making sense. Possibly a first at the NRO.]
On the one hand, I don't like those who simply look for reasons to criticize the administration. (There are, after all, so many legitimate reasons to do so.) Furthermore, I have some inclination to think that our attention should be on the disaster rather than politics.
On the other hand, it's not like people like me can actually do anything about this (other than giving money, which doesn't actually take up time or energy). So trying to say something true about the administration's response seems like a reasonable undertaking.
First let me say that laypeople like me don't know much of anything about how difficult such operations are and how they normally proceed. So our judgments should be tentative at this point.
However, I must say that I would never have guessed that our response to a disaster like this would be so sluggish and anemic. Although I am under the impression that such operations are more difficult than many people think, and I would never expect the government to take care of a problem of this magnitude anything like overnight, I've been surprised and alarmed by how half-hearted and inefficient our response has seemed. Surprised and alarmed enough that I've resolved to tuck away some extra extra water and granola bars in case anything similar ever happens around these parts.
Again: having no real understanding of these matters, my expectations may simply have been wildly unrealistic, but Kevin Drum reports passes on some info that seems to support my impressions.
I don't want to sing the same note over and over, but I can't help being reminded of the early stages of military action in Afghanistan, up to and including the Tora Bora debacle: our response seems to be timid, half-hearted, and proceeding at half speed. And that does not seem to be the fault of the yeomen on the ground.
[Addendum: An Instapundit reader says that FEMA advises local governments not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours after a disaster. This gives us some objective touchstone for evaluating the administration's response.]
[Some comments on this post at Centerfield are interesting, including some of the more restrained parts of Tully's. Centerfield, incidentally, is one of the saner parts of the 'sphere.]
[Reuters pulls few punches, referencing the administration's "botched" rescue efforts, it's attempts to shift blame, and Bush's "rare admission of error".]
[Die-hard knee-jerk Bush partisan David Frum possibly making sense. Possibly a first at the NRO.]
posted by Winston Smith at
12:13 PM
12 Comments:
Rather mystified by this. It seems to be a consistent form of "appeal to authority" you have. A heaping helping of "I don't know anything" followed by a sharp "neither do you" and then topped off with a "but here's a bunch of people who do so you'd better listen to them".
Odd.
Anyways, considering the fiasco regarding 9/11 and our attempt to diagnose the problem, assign blame and - most importantly - to fix the problem, I find it rather obvious to note that tomorrow never comes with this crowd. Perhaps your consistent reactions to these events throughout is a symptom of the problem, or perhaps a part of the problem.
Oh, and by the way, anyone who uses TCS as a reference for anything should be laughed at, not pointed out as making sense.
I'm sure I can come up with analogies in your field so the point could be made, but I'm only an engineer, not a philosopher.
Just one more point, from Flagrancy to Reason:
"Nothing motivates the political leadership in this country like looking bad in front of the only voters they actually care about: the ones who pay for their marketing campaigns, and rather less so in proportion to the payments the quarter or less that bother to vote for them.
For all the demonstrations of FEMA's incompetence and the incompetent Bush appointees at the head of it - and the nanny-state preventing people from taking any kind of independent action for their own good 'for their own good' even while the government, in return, does nothing to help them (thank god for big government!) - the original idiocy of this was not having an organized evacuation effort for the city's poor prior to the goddam storm.
Then there was the subsequent idiocy of sending out a parade of high government officials for the past week to congratulate each other on a 'job well done', thanking each other by name like they've just received the fucking Oscar, all the time explaining that people they themselves classified as "immobile" had 'chosen to stay'.
These jackasses did almost nothing but obstruct other people's efforts while starting to "rescue" people by leaving them stranded in large mobs without supplies for four days. If not for the immensely bad press generated even by FOX ("politicizing" the tragedy, oh no! how the fuck else do you get the government to do anything useful?) you'd still have politicians lining up at press conferences to congratulate their allies in making the disaster worse and 20,000 people rotting in that dome without food or water, rather than the present 2,000."
Just a thought.
Thanks for the thoughts, A, but you seem to misunderstand what an "appeal to authority" is.
You seem to use it--as it is often used--as the name of a fallacious form of reasoning. However, it is the name of a type of argument that it sometimes fallacious and sometimes not.
If Smith points out, for example, that Jones shouldn't try to treat himself for cancer but, rather, seek the opinions of experts, this is not an appeal to authority in the fallacious sense, though it is a kind of appeal to authority.
What you would have to do here to make the kind of points you allude to would be to give an argument for the conclusion that we already DO know enough to make the kinds of judgments in question.
But my guess is that you don't know any more about it than I do--though I could, of course be wrong. And I don't know enough to say.
Deride such points if you like, but, as Socrates taught us, if someone doesn't know what he's talking about, it's important to show him that. In general I find it important to point out that most bloggers are simply shooting their mouths off about things they don't understand.
I think there's plenty of evidence out there of FEMA's incompetence and the federal government's stunning lethargy in the face of this disaster. Like, for example, it taking nearly a week for Washington to approve New Mexico's offer of National Guard troops that was made on Sunday, the day before the storm hit...or the simple footage of FEMA dumbass Mike Brown, a man who wasn't competent enough to keep his job at the Arabian Horse showing society, saying he was unaware of people without food or water at the convention center of THURSDAY...while footage of people screaming for help and dragging DEAD BODIES THROUGH THE STREET was playing on CNN at the exact same time...ah, do your own goddamn homework: this shit is not as mystifying as you make it out to be.
What the heck: here's some more from the Chicago Tribune:
While federal and state emergency planners scramble to get more military relief to Gulf Coast communities stricken by Hurricane Katrina, a massive naval goodwill station has been cruising offshore, underused and waiting for a larger role in the effort.
The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore.
The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore, awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents.
But now the Bataan's hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty. A good share of its 1,200 sailors could also go ashore to help with the relief effort, but they haven't been asked. The Bataan has been in the stricken region the longest of any military unit, but federal authorities have yet to fully utilize the ship.
Captain ready, waiting
"Could we do more?" said Capt. Nora Tyson, commander of the Bataan. "Sure. I've got sailors who could be on the beach plucking through garbage or distributing water and food and stuff. But I can't force myself on people....
"I figured we would be a big help in New Orleans. We've got electricity, and the police could have charged up their radios. We've got water, toilets. We've got food."
But what do I know, I'm shrill.
That Frum piece is some of the most self-serving horseshit I've seen since this happened. News Flash: Haley Barbour is NOT some plain-spoken cracker free of political taint: he's a former CHAIRMAN of the Republican National Committee: he has every incentive to whitewash the federal failures here.
And the "politcization" of this disaster by eeeeevil liberals is not a fraction as odious as the blithe, heartless commentary of scumbags like Jonah Goldberg, Peggy Noonan, Mona Charen, O'Reilly, and the rest of these Millan Astrays of the keyboard whose only forceful commentary during a week of federal paralysis, thousands languishing, hundreds dying, was the call for looters to be shot on sight.
A few more facts to mull:
1. Regarding the levees; yes, as many Republican hacks have pointed out, CLINTON didn't fix the levees when he was in office! However, the cuts that Bush made in the levee project were so severe that, during his term, work on the levees, which was a continuous process, stopped for the first time in 37 years.
2. As for the buck passing regarding the responsibility for the murderously incompetent and, if I may say, callous rescue effort, the Department of Homeland Security's own website declares that, in the event of any large terrorist attack or significant natural disaster, FEMA is to lead all relief efforts.
More of that damn shrillness again!
Regarding the military response: my dad, a USAF Brig Gen, has been working the night shift the past 5 days because there is a 24-hr team working on relief. He's been trying to help air fields get cleaned up and opened to help get more aid in, trying to relocate helicopters to help with rescue missions, etc. Additionally, there is a closed AF base (I forgot which state is is in, but it might be Scott AFB) that still has all the old housing on it, and a bunch of evacuees are being moved there. One of our family friends was actually stuck at Keesler AFB, where they housed more than 1000 people and about 100 local dogs (I think from a pound or something) during the hurricane. About 300 soldiers from the Keesler area who are currently deployed in Iraq are being brought back to head up recovery efforts, which is pretty efficient, since they have a strong interest in recovering the area, AND they get to be with their families while they are all overcoming the stress. And their families don't have the additional stress of worrying about their loved ones in Iraq.
My dad said that the hardest part in getting this stuff done is all the security stuff. He was working in the middle of the night, mind you, so when he would call some place to get something done, they'd say "Boss gets in in the morning, we'll have to run this by him first." And resources are spread out across the entire country, so finding and coordinating them is a tough job.
The lack of speed is really frustrating, of course, but it isn't fair to expect every person to work around the clock. My dad has been working 16-17 hour days trying to work on this and keep on top of his every day tasks.
You compared the situation to our first response in Afghanistan, and I think the two are different. The military is SUPPOSED to be efficient with war stuff. That is its job. So frustration with ineffectiveness there is absolutely warranted. It are not, however, intended for situations like this. Though I'm glad the government is utilizing the military right now, I think the blame lies in the lack of preparation years ago. Check out this article. The date on it is kind of spooky, incidentally. However, I will say that, if we didn't have the sort of infrastructure we do have, such as good enough roads allowing all the people who got out to do so and the levee to hold as long as it did, it would be tons worse. So hey, our country is still ok, but it definitely needs work. - Taylor -
Oops, didn't edit well enough. In the last paragraph, I started to say "they are not," but switched the subject to "it", as in one military, and didn't change the verb. It IS not... -Taylor-
Hey, Taylor--nice to have you around! And thanks for the interesting data.
Matthew,
(1) Thanks for the important info. (2) You seem to be right about everything except for the degree of certainty that you attach to your conclusion. To paraphrase you, read the goddamn post--it's not what you make it out to be. I didn't claim or suggest that it was mystifying, I noted that evidence available to the layperson indicated that things were f*ck*d up, but that without significant understanding of such things we can't say how badly with much certainty. You report on sub-optimal aspects of the response, but the question then just becomes "how common are such things in large operations like this one?" How carefully have you studied the history of such operations, incidentally? Are you, say, an ex-general?
You aren't being shrill, you just aren't being as reasonable about this as you might be...IMHO.
Fine. I'm not reasonable. Just keep reading about this: I'd be willing to bet a goodly sum that you'll find out that I'm correct. If not, I'll be perfectly willing to admit it.
I enjoyed you blog about work related stress. I also have a site about work related stress which makes me appreciate this one even more! Keep up the good work!
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