Is it time for finger pointing yet?
I'd almost forgotten (as I'm sure was the intention) that all the Bush lovers haven't told us it's time for finger pointing and blame-gaming yet, even though they assured us that there would be plenty of time for that later (as they pointed fingers at every Democrat in Louisiana, and blamed the victims for being too stupid to leave). But my last post reminded me of it, so I'm asking again.
2 comments:
- Local/City Govt. dropped the ball, thus they get partial blame.
- Because of the previous point, it snowballed into an even bigger problem, in which the State Govt. dropped the ball; thus they get partial blame.
i.e. one example of 'dropping the ball' for Local/State: it is not the Federal Govt.'s responsibility to evacuate people (that's left up to the State/Local authorities)
- The issue snowballed even more after this & the Federal Govt. dropped the ball, so even they get partial blame.
The whole point is that it is not one person's fault (or even a single entity's fault, for that matter), nor will it ever be. The thing that is shocking/baffling is that some people think that it's the Bush Administration's (& only the Bush Administration's) fault.
When people talk about the poor handling of this crisis by FEMA and Bush, they're not talking about things that happened prior to the hurricane (that's not the sense that I get). Thay're talking about that disastrous week after the levees broke. We all watched as people were trapped in the city, people were raped, dying, neighboring communities were turning on the needy rather than helping them. And while we watched this happen, FEMA was not only not helping, it was hindering. As for Bush, this was the perfect time for a take-charge leader to step in and do something that needed to be done, and done right away. It certainly wasn't the time to complain that the Governor hadn't officially requested aid (which she had). Bush gets the blame for hobbling FEMA and for failing to be a leader when one was desperately needed.
You can heap plenty of blame on Nagin concerning the city's poor evacuation plan, a charge that you could probably lay on every major municipality in the country. But I don't see how you can blame him or the governor for the aftermath.
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