Venting Irritation
I cannot express how irate and disappointed I am with this country. Our country has been hit with one of the largest natural disasters in my lifetime and this has shown, to the American people and to the world in general how poorly we handle it. I mean, there are people still being rescued, aid still being sent and a city being drained in order to be rebuilt and all I see on the news is bunch of armchair emergency workers criticizing each and every play that is being made by the people actually out there trying to aid the victims of the disaster and recover the Gulf Coast.
I will not state that the emergency plans were the most efficient, the most alacritous or the best laid of plans - but criticizing them now, pointing fingers at our favorite targets, does little in the recovery effort. An investigation will be held and people will be blamed. Money will be allocated away from other vital causes to help prevent a repeat of this episode. (Until such time as the lack of funding in that department bites us in the ass and the chits will be reorganized again.) But why now? What does this serve to complain at this moment in history.
My point of view is this. If I need surgery and I'm under the knife, now is not the time to take the Doc aside to complain about his precision or acuity, or worse, send in some other guy who barely knows what the procedure is to finish the job. Just finish the job as best you can. Similarly, the middle of a military engagement is not the time to pull the commander off the field for a hearing and a courts martial. We are still in an emergency situation and lets let the people in place see this through. Then we can send in the investigatory committees, have the hearing and the sessions of Congress, point the fingers, spin the rhetoric and find the scapegoats (or maybe even the guilty parties) for any failings in this response.
And to argue those people who might say, "What's the harm in pointing out failings of this process right now." The harm is significant. The people coordinating the relief and rescue efforts are human beings. They just have the job of supporting the business of saving people. (Whether they are Emergency Rescue Workers, FEMA administrators, Administrative Assistants or what have you.) And they are doing that job right now. However, these people are either voted in, or they report to someone voted in. And as much as they want to help people (assuming most people like the work they do), they want to keep their jobs. They have families and expenses and, well like all human beings, they'll drop looking out for others if they have to start worrying about themselves. This is likely why so many of the local law enforcement and emergency workers quit in the wake of the hurricane. Well, the more folks like Michael Moore pass around sarcastic critiques of the Bush Administration's response, the more the people who are working to fix this problem will stop taking care of the situation and start trying to cover their own asses to protect their livelihood. I don't see how that helps anyone except those people who are using Katrina to push their agendas of deposing Bush.
Now, I'm not here to be an apoligist for ole' W. I've never voted for him, I don't even like him. But right now I sorta pity him. For 6 years this country has become strongly polarized against him, perhaps more so than ever before save for the Jefferson-Adams conflict. I can't think of a single other president who has so much partisan vitriol directed at him for such a long time. And, especially in this political clime, it seems when blame is looked for, this country tends to aim for the head. I can see the possibility of Bush taking the fall for this one, and I'm not convinced he's guilty. He may have made mistakes, mistakes that seem clear with the benefit of hindsight. But we, the people, voted for senators that supported the President's ambitions in Iraq, that supported the moving of numbers of our gaurdsmen into Iraq, and that supported budgetary changes that focused on anti-terrorism. That extra money had to come from somewhere. It's not like Bush could have forseen that mild mannered Katrina who barely hobbled to Cat 1 passing over Florida would be the explosive cyclone it turned out to be. It's not like Bush personally hired the horrific police officers mentioned in the story being passed around by doctor_caligari and gigglingwizard. It not like he's even supposed to be the one first on the scene. But he's taking the heat anyway. He's the one who is criticized for not doing anything, but then when he does travel to the scene, it's for a 'photo op.'
So, yeah, I'm apalled by the Politicians and the Pundits and the Hollywood Socialites crying outrage at the people working to fix things when the corpse of the coast is not even yet cold in, what seems to me, a blatant attempt to politically rebel against the long despised King George. And they are playing on the people's concern and sympathy and good will to sway us to their goals. And so, I simply ask - please wait. An investigation will surely be had and the evidence will be shown. Only after that time can we find the causes and seek to correct them so we are better prepared for the next disaster.