Blame game

Belle Waring dishes out the blame rather fairly.

Coordination is a big mystery to me. Corporations and other entities seem grossly inefficient, from what I've seen, and it's amaziing that the work of an industrial society gets done at all. We take it for granted most of the time that all these huge agglomerations of people will succeed in providing each other with food and cell phones and roads and such. The machine staggers, takes wrong turns, screws people over, but it seems to work for some definition of work.

Until it doesn't.

Put aside questions of individual incompetence as described in the linked posting. What were the organizational failures? Read this article in the NYT. Instead of action, we see bureaucrats sitting around in meetings trying to figure out who is responsible for what, who should be in control, what the rules are, who is supposd to communicate with whom. This is extremely typical behavior for dysfunctional and semi-functional organizations.

As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis.

Then there is the almost comic:

"I need everything you have got," Ms. Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last Monday, after the storm hit.

In an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers. "Nobody told me that I had to request that," Ms. Blanco said. "I thought that I had requested everything they had. We were living in a war zone by then."

So, essentially the army was held up because the governor failed to fill out the right form, nobody told her what form to fill out, and for some reason she couldn't establish communication to figure out what needed to be done. People dying because of red tape.

So, let the heads roll as Belle suggests, it will make people feel better. But the real culprit is the extremely dysfunctional system of bureaucratic organization, laced with toxic politics.

You're either on the bus or off the bus

The photo in this article by Mark Kleiman is a nice visual summary of the absolute failure of planning in New Orleans.

These are city-owned buses that could have been part of an evacuation plan. Obviously, that didn't happen.

The question is going on about who deserves the blame. The linked article cites Lousiana's legendarily corrupt local political culture. But obviously FEMA bears a share of the load. Incompetence up and down the line, in fact so widely shared that there is unlikely to be much in the way of retribution -- where would you start?

Collected Rants

A lot of writers are making the same basic point: we have a failed government that has blithely let a city die, and left thousands of its inhabitants at risk of dying. I'm not going to bother, but here are some:

Steve Gilliard

But the utter lack of imagination here is astounding. The things Special Opeation Command does is quite suited for New Orleans. But no one seemed to realize they could be used en masse. And one of the things they could have done is shore up the police, who are deserting in large numbers. They have just lost their nerve. No food and no communication can do that to you. Special Forces could have provided the professional support needed and aided in rescues. Instead, people are still waiting.

Paul Krugman

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Kevin Drum

It took days for this to start happening despite plenty of warning from the weather service and disaster experts and despite the fact that these are the well-understood requirements for almost any large scale disaster. At least, this was all well understood before FEMA got privatized, downsized, and staffed with political hacks. Now all they're left with is pathetic excuses.

And many more...

Leaders

I've had CNN on in the background most of the last few days. Yesterday, there briefly appeared the mayor of San Antonio, Phil Hardberger. He impressed me: with a dignified bearing, he expressed sympathy for the victims of the flood and welcomed them to his city. I'm not sure why but I had a very immediate and positive reaction to this Texas politician, as opposed to a certain other one who serves as preznit.

Bush is a mystery to me. Everything about him screams "small man". His incompetence, not just in real matters (like funding disaster relief) but in the symbolic role of leader. Strumming a guitar while a city is destroyed? He's been compared to Nero, but he doesn't have the stature for that. He's just a boob. But how did such a boob get elected president, twice? Is boobdome really so appealing for such a large swathe of the country? Well, yes, sorry, that's a stupid question.

Oh well, I think his time just passed. It may have taken the destruction of a major American city and the loss of thousands of American lives, but I think people will start to wake up. When even Peggy Noonan starts to question, ever so slightly, the competence of a Republican president, you know something has shifted in the great quivering American collective consciousness.