Leadership
Not to make a dire situation even darker, but in an attempt to salvage something positive out of the terrible disaster that is Katrina, it might be instructive to take a look at what has occured, how it was handled, and how it might have been lessened.
First, was this unexpected:
[In early 2001] the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country. The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.
Already we have seen articles and accusations flying about what the government didn’t do, or didn’t fund, in the years prior to Katrina. I imagine that in the months and years ahead, we will learn much more about diverted resources and broken promises, but now is not the time for that.
What is needed now? Leadership. What do we get? A president who “cuts short his vacation by 2 days!” (as it was breathlessly announced by a stooge on MSNBC yesterday afternoon). Then we get Bush’s speech from the Rose Garden. Now I have deliberately not watched him speak in years- my blood pressure can’t handle it- but for some reason I watched yesterday. I hate to make wild accusations that I have no way of confirming, but based on my life experience and observations I had while working as a roadie, when a person rambles in disjointed sentences, grinds his jaw, constantly licks his lips and squints while trying to speak? That person is on drugs. And frankly, if I were Bush, I’d be medicated to the moon as well. But if I were one of Bush’s handlers, I’d never let him in front of a live camera again. The speech was a mismash of blather, with a laundry list of material heading to the Gulf, as if Bush was answering playground taunts of malfesance with “Oh yeah? Shows you- I sent 5.2 million MRE’s to the area. Top that!” It was distressing to watch.
Ok, enough about that. What this horrible storm has shown us, very starkly, is that we are no more prepared for a national emergency now than before 9/11- in fact, probably less so. National Guardsmen, who are historically in place to assist in natural disasters, are tending to an unnatural disaster in Iraq. Resources earmarked for the repair and improvement of our infastructure have been diverted to Homeland Security “needs”. And the Homeland Security department? Well, they ain’t helping either.
I don’t want to admit it, but for the first time since 9/11, I’m getting a bit scared. Katrina should have been a perfect demostration of our ability as a nation to ultilize resources and handle a disaster- the sort of thing our government has been drilling into our heads non-stop since 9.12.01 will happen again- and when put to the test, it’s too little, too late.
