First it was the local officials and the press. The left wasn’t far behind (if at all), and even comments from the right started early. Now Congress is weighing in. Democrats are mostly sitting this phase out, not because they don’t think it’s right, but because they don’t think it will be mean enough. So far they’re wrong on that score. For example (source):
“I’m happy you left,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. “Because that kind of, you know, look in the lights like a deer tells me that you weren’t capable to do the job.”
“You get an F-minus in my book,” said Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss.
I’m not debating the job Michael Brown did in the aftermath of Katrina. That’s not the purpose here, and I don’t believe it should be the focus of any investigation yet. There is still time for that. What I am disturbed by is the way Mr. Brown is being treated. Not by TOM or the left. That’s to be expected. But I have been less than pleased by some conservitive bloggers unkind attacks. So have some others.
AJ Strata (The Strata-Sphere) had this to say,
You cannot blame FEMA for coming in expecting to execute Plan A and then be stumped when Plan A is not being executed and Nagin and Blanco are ‘winging it’. FEMA needs direction where to place resources. That is why they ‘coordinate’ resources for the state. The state cannot call on these resources, but FEMA can. But what is someone to do when the local officials are making political decisions instead of running a response plan?
Hindsight is wonderful, but scapegoating with hindsight is disgusting. So while so many stick their noses up at Brown for not being experienced enough, I remind them he is much more qualified than they are on this subject. He is more qualified than I am.
Those are only a few of many good points he makes. I encourage you to read his entire post. He pointed me to MacRanger’s post on this topic, where he said,
Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., cautioned against too narrowly assigning blame.
“At the end of the day, I suspect that we’ll find that government at all levels failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and the Gulf Coast,” said Davis.
Davis pushed Brown on what he and the agency he led should have done to evacuate New Orleans, restore order in the city and improve communication among law enforcement agencies.
Brown said: “Those are not FEMA roles. FEMA doesn’t evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications.”
And that is exactly right. FEMA doesn’t provide those functions! FEMA by it’s creation in 1979 specifically works as a liason between local/state governments and the federal government.
Great point. The debate over what was done, right and wrong, needs to be focused around what role each player had. I don’t fault the bat boy when the Phillies lose. (Although a case can be made against the Pittsburgh clock operator). What I’m saying is this, you can’t blame Mike Brown for not doing some else’s job. John Hinderaker at Powerline said it like this,
No doubt FEMA’s performance was imperfect. What else is new? But Michael Brown didn’t flood New Orleans. Nor did he fail to order a mandatory evacuation. Nor, when the order was finally given by the appropriate authorities, was he the one who failed to carry it out competently. I thought it was a mistake when President Bush cashiered Brown, and his performance tonight validates that judgment. FEMA’s position is eminently defensible. But the Bush administration, historically, has failed to defend its own agencies aggressively, and instead has passively yielded to the news cycle.
If you’ll forgive one more analogy, isn’t this like blaming the waitress when your food doesn’t taste good? Resposibility links with the part of a task someone is supposed to cary out. If that waitress put your order in incorrectly, yes the blame is hers. But, if she did her job and the cook is just lousy, the blame goes to them. In evaluating the response to these disasters we need to concentrate on responsibility. Let’s not blame Michael Brown for failures that occured elsewhere.
Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush looks at this roasting as an extension of TOM’s highly oversensationalized coverage of the storm and it’s aftermath.
What we have here is an outgrowth of the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina – coverage which we now know was almost entirely inaccurate. Outside of the facts that a hurricane hit and flooding resulted, I can’t think of anything else reported which was either relevant or tru[e]. The reporting we did get played entirely to emotion, sensationalism and the quest for high ratings. Part of this phony media narrative of Katrina is the assertion that Michael Brown completely dropped the ball as head of FEMA. Did Michael Brown drop the ball? Only a careful sifting of the facts post-mortem will tell the tale…and it is disgusting that Congress seems more interested in playing to the MSM gallery and public opinion polling than working for truth.
What is amazing here is that Republicans are going along with it – here we have the MSM which played false with the War on Terrorism, the liberation of Iraq, the 2004 election, Tom Delay, etc, etc, etc…and yet after all of these falsehoods and distortions by the MSM, some Republicans are working on the assumption that somehow the MSM got it right about Michael Brown and Katrina.
Good points. Yes, we need to examine this disaster as we do any event like this. But let’s do so with an eye on learning how we can do better, and an understanding of who was responsible for each part of the response.
Linked with the OTB Beltway Traffic Jam and the Mudville Gazette Open Post
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