The definitive statement: failure of Leadership - Page 3  

It seems to me that the Mayor and Governor screwed up the evacuation (even though it was well planned, and Bush phoned them and urged them to do it on Saturday - they had the busses that they could have used to evacuate, and they did not do it).

FEMA is a bunch of useless twits, with numerious ways of failing to help and making the situation worse. They represent the worst that the Federal government has to offer - people willing to let others die in order to preserve the beaurocratic pecking order. Sending 1000 firefighters to hand out fliers is a criminal act.

But the only thing that Bush did wrong is appoint the wrong guy to head FEMA. Not only did he urge the evacuation, but when he saw that it was not going to work he kicked out FEMA and sent in the military.

I think that Bush did a good job, considering the circumstances.

It's not just Brown who's an incompetent appointee.


link.

--B

Yeah, I think Bush did a good job, too. Except for the cronyism that's cost hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lives. And the photo op with a guitar while New Orleans drowned. Aside from that, Bush has been great!

The biggest thing that has demonstrated Bush's failure here and as a president is that when there was a vacuum of leadership in this crisis, Bush basically said "It's not my responsibility." And he's continuing to take that attitude with the his whole proposed "investigation." Rather than saying it was unacceptable and then being a leader and working to fix it, he just says it's unacceptable, but not his problem and that maybe when it's over he'll figure out who to pin it on.

I agree - those were his two contributions to the disaster.

However - I doubt that he appointed the head of FEMA thinking that the guy was a screw up, he probably trusted the guy and thought that he would do a good job - too bad he did not appoint Giuliani as the head of FEMA.

If it was so obvious that this guy was unsuitable for the post, why was there no outcry when he was appointed?

Well, why was there no outcry when Joe Allbaugh was originally appointed FEMA director? Allbaugh? Campaign director in 2000. Brown? His deputy and former judge of Arabian horse judges.

And Giuliani? I'd rather the head of FEMA be, you know, someone who has worked in some kind of disaster management capacitynot a politician.

Because to criticise your President is to spit in the face of all the Founding Fathers while defecating on the stars and bars and calling Jesus Christ a faggot.

There's a war on. Keep up. Only liberal traitors criticise George Bush.

Your use of quotes is correct. From the source I cited above:


Oh yeah, and


And also


--B

You guys refuse to proportionately place the blame. Why? The City and State responses were profoundly inadequate and clearly violated their emergency response plans. How can this be left out of the picture? The bulk of the evacuees are in another State for Pete's sake. If the locals had done their jobs, the humanitarian crisis in New Orleans, to large extent, would be a non-issue -- compared to what transpired.

Now, of course there is significant FEMA negligence in coordinating the disaster, and in the absence of the state and local response the Feds allowed babies to die of exposure, and that neglect should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But to the extent that the Feds 'were able' to get food and water to the Superdome on Day 1, 2, and 3, the Governor or Mayor should have been 10 times as able.

But you guys are beginning to tumble over yourselves to 'blame Bush' -- and don't get me wrong, he shouldn't escape criticism -- but it's coming across as a quick-and-dirty attempt at turning a human tragedy into agitprop.


One more time: From the BBC (so it has to be true)

see you guys Friday

I don't know. The only criticism of the mayor is that he didn't get people out. He didn't have the buses, he didn't do certain things that were very, very difficult to do. As pfflam shows us, this failure wasn't based on provable (at this stage) negligence. It's one thing if you want to save a bunch of people and fall short because of the difficulty of the situation and quite another if you debilitate FEMA, put flacks in charge, refuse help and therefore deny it to those who need it, and then try to blur the facts in the public eye. Not the same thing.

If the mayor and governor didn't get everyone out they could have because they were lazy or incompetent, let's see some proof that's true. Cadavers aren't proof of this. If in an extreme situation they made tough decisions with the resources they had, that's something else.

--B

The mayor should take a ton of blame.

The governor should take a ton of blame.

Louisiana's senators and representatives should take a ton of blame.

DHS and FEMA should rot in hell for their ineptitude.

But the President of the United States should fall on his own sword for his blatant misuse of firefighters as props for his PR campaign. Considering the situation I think this is probably the most fucked up thing this president has ever done (and it's a long list of fucked up things).

The Salt Lake Tribune wrote:






However, I think Josh Marshall sums it up well:


So when you see photos like this one with all those shiny Coast Guard helicopters and officers at attention, it puts it into perspective doesn't it?



Bush DOES NOT get a free pass on this one. People were dying while Bush and Rove staged photo ops. Fuckers.

It was nice to hear Aaron Brown and Cafferty fully admit that if this president had the last name Clinton, the support for the president would be radically different.

Indeed.

This president and his chronies are scumbags.

even the washington times is pissed at the federal response

Conservative, liberal, republican, democrat..... it doesn't matter what system of beliefs our government leaders follow. This atrocity was a systematic failure on virtually every level. The infrastructure in place was outdated and ill-prepared. The evacuation plan was not rehearsed and the public was not properly informed. The public wasn't allotted ample time to leave, also there were errors with where and how to go.

These are all things that cannot stand in 21st Century America. Information is power. People need to know the plan. What, where and how.

Update: Don't worry, failure of leadership is ok. Rice says God is going to fix it.

We really need to get these shills out of the whitehouse.

Maybe that's why she was shoe shopping.

The secretary of state's job is to conduct foreign policy. If she was involved in this crisis at all, it was to put a black face out there to rebut any racist critiques of the admin.

--B

Fair enough - you need to look your best when JC can check back in at any time.

And according to Barbara 'Beautiful Mind' Bush 'the poor' are much better off now their homes and lives are destroyed so everyone's happy.....turned out quite well in the end didn't it?

Actually, it's more complicated than that. "Foreign policy" is a broad umbrella term:


My assumption is that State would be who would coordinate the relief efforts of other countries in case of a disaster like this. I may be wrong, of course, but it makes sense that the department in charge of relations with foreign countries would be in charge of helping them help us.

Nope. FEMA's got that covered.


--B

Indeed! I suppose everyone can just go home now. FEMA's there!

I must say that I am deeply concerned with the idea that this administration seems poised to turn its disastrous failure into political gain...all through the red tape that it created by folding FEMA into DHS.

Theoretically...

Funny, he gets slammed for not visiting fast enough and then slammed for his visits.

From the department of the Obvious: Photo-ops are what politicians do.


Yes, It's staggering that a Christian would say such things.
By the way, "Waiting on the Lord" is a biblical expression. And no, it doesn't mean you're sitting idly by while people suffer.

And fake ones are what the current crop do. At times of national crisis.


Yes, but we're talking about Rice.......


No, it means we are headed for an extremist theocratic suppression of liberty...and of course no-one is idle while people are suffering - they're too busy making it happen.....

Funny, he spends three days on vacation while people are dying in New Orleans and people think that's ok.

Funny, this is a fuckup of monumental proportions and no one seems to think that maybe the guy in charge of the country ought to be held accountable, even to the tiniest degree.

Republicans can criticize Kofi as much as they like, but he knows where the buck stops.

--B

What nonsense. The drinking water must be contaminated in Utah too.

NOBODY on this board believes Bush isn't responsible to a certain degree. I know I've referenced his patronage appointment at FEMA as well as other things.

The biggest problem here is how a bunch of partisan nuts on this board, who have been ranting against Bush for half a decade, seem determined to use a human disaster of epic proportion for partisan political purposes.

And it is truly despicable.

OMG.

more continuing fema incompetence:

Oh do shut up. Seriously.

This has been a catastrophic, inarguable, and very very deadly failure of leadership on the part of this government; instead of leadership, the people on the coast and in the NO area got press conferences with Bush standing in front of unused helicopters or surrounded by firefighters or police. We get firefighters volunteering to help being used to pass out flyers.

Heads need to roll for this, starting with Mike Brown's. But Bush's system of patronage and cronyism which has led to this needs to be investigated.

This government failed the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with deadly consequences. How anyone can defend or attempt to spin that is beyond me and anyone who does just needs to shut the hell up.

I'll second that.

Has it occurred to you, Frank, that the reason people have been complaining about Bush on these boards is because he fucks shit up? That he is, in fact, a really terrible president?

And that the latest evidence of his feckless, photo-op/PR empty suit approach to governance just happens to have got a lot of people killed, and it makes some of us really, really angry? That utter bullshit got people killed?

Can you dig it? No, you can't. In Bush world, there is no such thing as forming opinions due to consequences in the real world. Opinions are what you come in with, and the real world has to broken to your will.

Well, the Gulf Coast is broken. Now comes the fantasy media blitz that makes out Bush to be a resolute leader, and the hero of Katrina.

But you go ahead and worry about the irrational dislike of Bush by crazy people on the internet, since that's obviously the real problem.

Whenever a disaster arrive :

- the leaders in place, try to explain that they where right
- the opposition tend to say the contrary in case of weakness of the leaders. There was no weakness during 9/11 : no critics came from the opposition. If they did it, they would have lost all credibility.

The real question is :
- is this disaster the result of the failure of a particular leadership, or the failure of a system ?

IMHO, the Bush admin did a bad job (for the locals I don't know, I will wait for furthers investigations), but I am not sure that we can only blame them : I am not sure that the way that the system created to take in charge such situations is good.

It's easy to change leaders, much more difficult to change systems.

The FEMA we have to work with is a direct result of this administration and its general philosophy of governance (and which is shared by the contemporary Republican party).

For years we've been preached to about the merits of "small government" and "personal responsibility". Any number of Bush officials and Republican point men are on record disparaging the entire idea of FEMA as a "government handout" program which needed to be radically downsized.

Until now, nobody bothered much with the inherent contradiction between the right wing line of "let the states deal with it" and the explicit Bush campaign promise to be the one to "protect the homeland".

Remember the horrible specter of letting that pussy John Kerry be in charge of responding to a crisis? That worthless flip-flopper?

Gee, I wonder if John Kerry would have taken something like FEMA seriously enough to put someone with experience in charge, like, oh, say, Bill Clinton did. I wonder if that Herman Munster lookin' humorless drudge might have taken a national disaster seriously enough to get his ass in gear at the first reports of the danger. I wonder if that "Mommy" party big government whore would have taken the whole idea of a federal government seriously enough to treat it like an instrument that can actually get things done, instead of a whipping boy and stalking horse for corporate cronyism?

Here's your small government. I hope ya'll cheer leaders rot in hell.

A good article which glosses addabox's last post. About the conservatives' "Constitution in Exile" which "sees government as the enemy of individual rights," and how that compares to the post-New Deal idea that "individual rights require affirmative steps by the government, rather than passive restraint. Private powerand in the case of Katrina, the forces of naturecan pose greater threats to individual liberty than public power."


--B

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