The horns of a dilemma

[unixronin]

I'm baffled.

On the one hand, I find it difficult to conceive of this massive level of organized, concerted, bumbling incompetence taking place without those at the top of the command chain -- and here, the command chain goes from Michael Brown, Director of FEMA, to the Director of Homeland Security, to George Bush -- raising all kinds of holy hell to get effective action underway.  (Edit:  It's been observed that Brown's previous job was running the International Arabian Horse Association, which he ran into the ground and got fired from for it, then pumped it up on his resumé to make it sound like a more important and better-connected job than it really was.)  On the other hand, I find myself unable to conceive of any plausible hidden agenda -- be it financial or political -- that could lie behind the slowness and obstructiveness of the Gulf Coast hurricane disaster relief being intentional.  Surely any possible hoped-for political gain would be neutralized by the negative effect of the worldwide visibility of the complete incompetence our government has displayed.  It's disasters of this scale that the Department of Homeland Security was chartered to handle and prevent; you can't prevent a hurricane, but as far as handling response after the event, it looks as though you're better off not being protected at all than being protected by Homeland Security.  (As an aside, interdictor says it's very easy to tell the folks who joined Homeland Security out of a desire to protect and serve from those who joined to bully and intimidate people under the color of authority.)  The lesson of Homeland Security so far seems to be that the efficiency and effectiveness of any government agency fall in geometric proportion to its size, and when you put together a department as big as Homeland Security, its actual usefulness asymptotically approaches zero.

Something needs to change, and it needs to change soon; but I don't know whether America as it now is has the spirit and the determination left to go through its government from top to bottom and cut out all the deadwood.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I don't. But it appears to me the principal visible role and activity of FEMA in "managing" this particular emergency has been to PREVENT aid from reaching New Orleans. There's a fully equipped mobile hospital that was specifically designed for use in disasters exactly like this one sitting idle in a Mississippi parking lot because FEMA won't give them permission to come to New Orleans and offer aid. There's a US Navy amphibious assault ship, the USS Bataan (LHD-5), sitting offshore in the Gulf that sailed there on the captain's own initiative; it has a 600-bed hospital that could offload patients from New Orleans hospitals that have no water, food or power ... but FEMA won't give permission for them to begin medevac operations. They're currently providing local basing for two MH-60 Seahawks out of Norfolk, VA and two MH-53 Sea Stallions out of Corpus Christi, Texas, flying SAR, and that's all they've been allowed to do. The imbeciles FEMA put on the ground have turned back shipments of pure drinking water and ice, and even intentionally cut Jefferson Parish's emergency communication lines. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

This is why I say relief efforts in New Orleans would probably be further along if FEMA had just stayed home and watched TV.