This is a tale of two Gulfs, one Persian, one of Mexico.

The public reaction to the response of the federal government in the wake of hurricane Katrina was not generated in a vacuum. Discontent with the Bush administration had been building, and the seeming complete lack of planning and coordination in New Orleans provided only a trigger for the disapproval of President Bush in the recent polls, it is not a root cause.

However, the falling levels of satisfaction before the hurricane struck also were not rooted in what many attribute them to, the increasing numbers of casualties from the war in Iraq with little visible progress towards the stated goals of building a stable, democratic nation there.

It is the actions of the administration, and specifically President Bush, in response to the challenges in the two Gulfs that has undermined the confidence of the American public.

The Persian Gulf has long been a center of difficulties for American foreign policy, ringed by regimes that are either outright hostile or opposed to the support the US has long given Israel.

As I have written elsewhere, my views on the need for the Second Gulf War against Iraq have been evolving, and I now think that in a Machiavellian world driven by realpolitik, the regime of Saddam Hussein did present a danger to the United States, but not the one presented by the administration. I will not add to the endless discussion of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that were not there and the intelligence failures that led to a chimera being used as a justification for a pre-emptive, optional war. The origins of those failures are not important to the issue at hand; what is crucial is how the administration did not recognize that when what was perceived by the public to be the main justification for the war was nonexistent, the public then began to wonder why we were sacrificing our best and brightest for a people who did not show the gratitude that the administration said before the war to expect.

Americans think of the United States as a “good” country, a moral nation. We are the good guys, the ones in the white hats. No matter how despicable the behavior of a regime, there is an uneasiness associated with a pre-emptive attack because that is not what good people do. We teach our children to not hit first.

The administration as a whole, and specifically President Bush, have done an abysmal job of explaining why, despite the absence of WMD in Iraq, we did need to “hit first”. The statements made project an attitude of “we don’t need to explain anything to you,” which is not appropriate in a democracy, and not the leadership that President Bush likes to talk about.

A leader does not make decisions and then rest in imperial grandeur. A leader inspires, a leader creates conditions where those he is leading are willing to make sacrifices and do things they would ordinarily regard as undesirable.

Even before the absence of results in the search for WMD became obvious even to the biggest cheerleaders for the war, the administration should have been out front, explaining why it was necessary to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein beyond the assertions regarding WMD development.

Instead of leading, we have had reacting and resistance that gives the appearance that the administration refuses to acknowledge reality.

This doesn’t play well in Peoria where they teach children to not hit first.

The Gulf of Mexico has its own diplomatic challenges, but they pale in comparison with the killer storms that occur every summer.

Now we are confronted with one of the largest natural disasters to ever impact the United States, something that was seen coming, a luxury nature rarely affords.

Again, we had a response after the fact from the administration, despite the slow motion horror that was telegraphed well before the storm struck. Instead of showing leadership before the event, we were given the spectacle of public relations events staged by an administration that while on vacation had apparently left no one at home to take care of business.

It was well known that hurricane Katrina was a huge, very powerful storm, having swelled days before it struck land to a category 5 hurricane, but despite that forewarning, we had reaction instead of leadership.

The timeline is well known, and the story presented in several recent reports in major magazines do not paint a pretty picture. Even if a supposed “anti-Bush bias” is filtered out, the raw facts extracted do not show a leader who has the situational awareness to make good decisions, they show someone who is detached from both those he leads and from the world at large.

There was no significant change in the schedule followed by the President for days after the storm devastated an area the size of England, and when the agenda was finally changed the most telling image of the response was a photo of the President looking out the window of Air Force One at the damage, remote, far above those on the ground who were short of food and water and had no transportation to get to a safer place because of the inadequate response of government at all levels.

What would a leader have done in the last days of August 2005 with a major hurricane bearing down on a vulnerable coast where for years the predictions of the consequences of a storm like this were of a modern-day Atlantis?

Before the storm struck, President Bush should have cancelled the remainder of his vacation and returned to the White House. Slow down the knee-jerk defense that “he can do his job just as well at his ranch in Crawford as he can in the White House” and take the time to understand that it is irrelevant. The need for his return to the Washington has no foundation in what the President requires to “do his job,” it is based upon what the nation needs from those who would be its leaders. A speech from the Oval Office on the eve of landfall of a powerful storm the size of Texas, warning about the expected devastation, and asking that the nation pray for those that soon must endure the tempest would have shown a leader who is both concerned for those he leads and is in place, in charge, and ready to handle any crisis arising from the ravaging hurricane.

Instead, we received photo ops, artificial, simulations of events that were repeated in the devastated in a display of complete disregard for the seriousness of the failure, with equipment and people carefully placed around the President to give the appearance of activity, of “hard work” if you will, but with the reality sadly different once the President and the cameras leave.

We have a tale of two Gulfs, one foreign, one domestic, both showing failures to lead by a man who talks about how he is a leader.

There is a third gulf, a void, a chasm of understanding on the part of the administration and its defenders.

This is key, important enough to repeat: it is not about what the President needs, it is what the nation needs.

Yet all the defenses of the “vacation President” revolve around what the President needs.

Think about it.

President George W. Bush talks a lot about leadership, about how he is a leader, how leadership is needed. He repeats variations of the phrase “hard work” almost as a mantra.

Leaders do not waste the time talking about leadership and hard work; they show leadership through their work.

Technorati Tags: commentary, Iraq, Iraq War, Katrina relief, New Orleans, patterns in the white noise, politics, right wing, right-wing, right-wing politics

Without requiring any additional details, it is painfully apparent that there is a massive failure of planning and coordination at all levels of government in the response to Hurricane Katrina, both before and after the storm struck.

Recently, I posted a link to a Scientific American article published in October of 2001 that predicted with remarkable accuracy the physical effects of a hurricane hitting along the path taken by Katrina.

Wired News has posted a Reuters article titled “They Knew What to Expect” that starts:

Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared.

“The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled around,” said Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University.

Later in the article:

“Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies,” he said.

In light of that, said disaster expert Bill Waugh of Georgia State University, “It’s inexplicable how unprepared for the flooding they were.” He said a slow decline over several years in funding for emergency management was partly to blame.

In comments on Thursday, President Bush said, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

But LSU engineer Joseph Suhayda and others have warned for years that defenses could fail. In 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune published a five-part series on “The Big One,” examining what might happen if they did.

It predicted that 200,000 people or more would be unwilling or unable to heed evacuation orders and thousands would die, that people would be housed in the Superdome, that aid workers would find it difficult to gain access to the city as roads became impassable, as well as many other of the consequences that actually unfolded after Katrina hit this week.

John of Castle Argghhh! has written on the difficulties inherent in any massive operation. I recommend you read his entire post (the logistical discussion commences after the updates at the top). Regarding his credentials on disaster planning, he writes:

My thoughts on the subject are informed by the fact that I spent two years as one of those guys in the Army whose job it was to do the generic plans for incident responses (from a DoD perspective, and *ALWAYS* subordinate to FEMA - they’re the Big Dog), designing and executing training events to rehearse the plans, and, now and then, implement them, though during that time there was no event ever approaching the magnitude of what’s happening in Louisiana right now. But ask me about that exercise we did with Seattle that resulted in 10,000 notional dead and injured, with a concomitant breakdown in social control… my point being - we actually *do* planning (or at least did) for events of this size.

Some of the New Madrid earthquake scenarios, especially the winter ones… were visions of Apocalypse. Imagine flattening good chunks of St. Louis and Memphis - in January. And losing the bridges over the Mississippi (which means you can’t barge people and equipment, either), and we don’t want to even *think* about the economic impact of losing the I-70 and I-40 bridges… much less the rail bridges.

The weather makes your response focus completely different, because the shelter requirements suddenly become astounding and compelling. You’re thinking tent cities in 10 degree weather become nightmares. Clothing, keeping pipes from freezing, sanitation…. I’m thinking 10,000 suddenly homeless people dumped into that weather… in the clothes they had on at the time… There’s no spending the night wandering around in a daze, because you’ll freeze to death before that - the looting starts 5 minutes after the shaking stops. It *has* to - because they aren’t going to live through the night otherwise. But I digress. If you are going to have disasters of this magnitude, the Gulf Coast is a moderately benign place to have them, weather-wise, but I digress again.

Later in the post, John faults both Governor Kathleen Blanco and President George W. Bush for not putting what he terms “the Public Face of the Government” forward to get out the information on the rescue and relief efforts, “Because Controlling The Perception of The Disaster in it’s early stages will help shape the form of the follow-on actions.” I stress that you must read the entire post to get his full meaning. The quotes here are far from adequate to explain his points.

A few days ago at my non-centrist weblog Radio Saigon I posted “Some thoughts… …on leadership“, which was written before the full extent of the disaster in New Orleans became clear. The post was intended to discuss the declining support for the war in Iraq and how that decline could be at least in some measure attributed to a failure of leadership on the part of President George W. Bush. The post starts with a statement of how “leadership” in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, was comparatively easy:

There are many who like to extol the “leadership” shown by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of unprecedented terrorist attacks in 2001.

While not attempting to minimize the effects of the statements and gestures made by President Bush (along with other political leaders, statements and gestures often forgotten in the partisan fray), there is something that must be said:

On September 12, 2001, the task of “leadership” was easy.

When a population is in shock, seeking for reassurance that the world has not ended, that all is not lost, it is easy to be a “leader”, it is easy to ignore personal feelings and say, “Everything will be OK, there is someone in charge who will see things through.”

Ask any parent.

The inability of President Bush to convey complex messages in understandable terms is one of the root causes of the failure of his leadership, both in maintaining public support for the continuing war in Iraq along with the seemingly rudderless response to the aftermath of the New Orleans disaster.

As John pointed out, however, this failure of leadership exists at multiple levels of government. John faults Louisiana Governor Blanco along with President Bush. The problem is more widespread than merely those two levels.

For example, a recent interchange during an interview has gained much attention, as commented upon by Jack Shafer in Slate:

Last night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper abandoned the old persona to throttle Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in a live interview. (See the video or read the transcript.)

“Does the federal government bear responsibility for what is happening now? Should they apologize for what is happening now?” Cooper opened.

As if campaigning before the local Democratic Ladies’ Club lunch, Landrieu sing-songed back, “Anderson, there will be plenty of time to discuss all of those issues, about why, and how, and what, and if.” She went on to thank President Bush, President Clinton, former President Bush, Senators Frist and Reid, and “all leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Alabama, “for their help.

Her condescending filibuster continued: “Anderson, tonight, I don’t know if you’ve heard—maybe you all have announced it—but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating.”

Cooper suspended the traditional TV rules of decorum and, approaching tears of fury, said:

Excuse me, Senator, I’m sorry for interrupting. I haven’t heard that, because, for the last four days, I’ve been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.

And when they hear politicians slap—you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there’s not enough facilities to take her up.

Do you get the anger that is out here? …

I mean, I know you say there’s a time and a place for, kind of, you know, looking back, but this seems to be the time and the place. I mean, there are people who want answers, and there are people who want someone to stand up and say, “You know what? We should have done more. Are all the assets being brought to bear?”

Landrieu kept her cool, probably because she’s in Baton Rouge, while the stink of corpses caused Cooper to tremble in rage all the way to the commercial break.

I saw this interview live; it was painful.

The article continues to describe an aggressive (especially for the source) exchange on NPR between Robert Siegel and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, refusing to allow Secretary Chertoff to dodge questions regarding why the situation in New Orleans was so dire. In this commentary piece, Shafer is discussing the context of reporters finally calling public officials on lies and stonewalling responses to questions.

There is another context here.

How is it that the failure is of such a large scope, involving all levels of government?

How is it that someone Senator Landrieu can spend time congratulating her fellows in Congress in a manner that Cooper almost called “back slapping”?

Who can be held accountable?

That question is the easiest one to answer in this entire tragedy.

To find who the American people should hold accountable, go to the nearest mirror and look into it.

We are proud that the United States is a democracy at all levels of government, city, county or parish, state, federal. All of those tasked with creating disaster plans, with coordinating activities between the different levels of government, with ultimately minimizing as much as reasonably possible the effects of disasters natural or man-made ultimately report to the voters, directly or indirectly.

So, who is accountable?

Those who chose the ones who call themselves our leaders.

Those who voted.

Those who voted for candidates who said what the voters wanted to hear instead of what they needed to hear.

Those who voted for their own regional concerns first and only incidentally thought about the nation as a whole.

Those who voted based on a single issue.

These leaders towards whom I am reading outrage from all sides were elected.

Only the voters can change things.

The objection always arises - one vote makes no difference.

One of the worlds greatest criminals, and ironically enough a man who led his nation into the industrial age, Josef Stalin, once said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million, a statistic.”

I offer this in response to the objection: A single cry for change is a voice in the wilderness; a million, a revolution.

The people of Lebanon and Ukraine peacefully forced change through against all odds. We have a stable system that they did not have, we have advantages they did not have, we can make changes through the ballot box.

Yet we refuse to change.

We can stop listening to the panderers and instead vote for those who do the real work of governing.

We can ignore the grandstanders.

We can change what we say we support when the pollsters call.

We can change our priorities.

We can change what we say when we write our government representatives, at all levels.

We can change things, but it is up to us.

It is past time we did so.

—

Cross-posted to Random Fate.

Technorati Tags: hurricane Katrina, hurricane Katrina news, New Orleans, news, patterns in the white noise, some thoughts

In order to achieve what I desired for my original weblog at Random Fate to be, I wanted to separate my political views from my other posts, placing only the political into my weblog here at Radio Saigon and my non-political or most balanced analyses into Random Fate.

What I have read in the past few hours goes beyond all comprehension, beyond all belief, beyond all limits, and cannot be restricted to one venue.

I cannot separate the political from the personal.

Some have said that “cultural relativism is evil”. If what they say is true, NO CULTURE DESERVES TO SURVIVE.

I have been reading weblogs on both the left-wing and the right-wing.

What do I encounter in response to the effects of the hurricane Katrina?

Instead of “here is what you can do to help those stricken in New Orleans, Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other areas” I find “what is (insert enemy point of view here) doing about this?” and “they (the opposition) are wrong because they are not doing (whatever)”.

There it is…

Do your own God-damned math, and tell your fellow travelers to SHUT THE FUCK UP if they can do nothing more than to cry how the “other side” is inadequate in their response to this disaster.

If you cannot do the math, if you cannot see the problem, then let me tell you something:

YOU ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

Then shut the Hell up and let the adults take care of things, you pitiful, pitiful, hopeless children.

There is nothing more to say, and if you do not understand, you are not intelligent enough to be a full member of the human race.

Technorati Tags: left wing weblogs, left-wing weblogs, right wing weblogs, right-wing weblogs, weblogs