Wishin’ and a Hopin’

When asked about why there was such a failure of response to the hurricane considering the lessons of 9/11, McClellan just launched into a litany of “that horrible day…never again…preventing terrorists attacks” as if bringing up the attacks mitigates the scope of their malfeasance rather than exacerbates it. I doubt they can wring much more out of that sponge, but maybe they can. It’s been four years since 9/11 and clearly they have actually gotten worse at disaster response, not better. It doesn’t seem very smart to keep pointing that out.

As the chairmen of the 9/11 commission said yesterday:

“The same mistakes made on 9/11 were made over again, in some cases worse,” Kean said. “Those are system-wide failures that can be fixed and should have been fixed right away.”

Added Hamilton: “I’m surprised, I’m disappointed and maybe even a little depressed that we did not do better four years after 9/11. It says we’re still very vulnerable.”

Josh Marshall has a full rundown on the various implications of this NY Times article, which seems to indicate that while hurricane victims were dying on national television, the Justice Department was debating the fine points of posse commitatus and worrying about whether it would look good to take command from a female governor. This is the same justice department that has declared torture to be legal and asserted a previously unheard of doctrine that the president has unlimited powers during wartime.

Perhaps Bush should have declared war on Mexico, then nobody would have been confused about whether the president of the United States could legally respond when the Governor of Louisiana said she needed all the help she could get.

Leaders prove their mettle in times of crisis. And 9/11 was a fairly simple crisis to manage. It was a terrible tragedy and a shocking act of violence but it happened quickly in one small area and then was over. The primary response required by the federal government was to figure out how it happened and take steps to prevent it from happening again. The only immediate decision the president had to make was an easy one — whether to depose the Taliban and break up al Qaeda. And even that decision didn’t have to be made on the spot in the midst of a rapidly changing situation on the ground and ongoing death and destruction. During the event itself and its immediate aftermath he was famously reading “My Pet Goat” and then flying all over the country like a chicken with his head cut off stopping only to make timorous speeches about how we were going to find “these folks” who had done this.

His reputation for great leadership and crisis management consists solely of going before the American paople with a bullhorn and saying “… and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon.” That’s not leadership — that’s cheerleading. Bush and his minions have never understood the difference.

This hurricane crisis required a series of on the spot decisions to be made over the course of several days, in terms of preparation and coordination. His delayed response to the event was to tell people how he “understood” there was a lot of work to do. And, of course, his administration was johnny on the spot with slime and defend. For that they have an instant response team of professionals in place.

Leaders also prove their mettle by how they learn from mistakes. Apparently, all the hoohaa we’ve been listening to on a loop over the past five years about 9/11 changing everything was crap. The NY Times article reports this:

… officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration’s senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.

The same people who never imagined that planes could fly into buildings apparently never imagined that a terrorist attack or natural disaster could incapacitate local first responders. Dear God. has there ever been a more incompetent administration?

I know it’s not polite to bring this up, but the DHS has received $95.5 billion dollars over the last three years. I think we need to ask what they’ve been spending it on because I can’t see any results.

It appears to me that the lesson that the Bush administration took from 9/11 was that we needed to prevent terrorists from ever hijacking airplanes and flying them into the world trade center again. I think we can feel confident that that will not happen again. After all, there is no world trade center to fly into.

Other than that, we are more vulnerable than we’ve ever been before to every other disaster scenario both manmade and natural — they simply can’t imagine them. This is the faith based, best case scenario, Peter Pan government. They literally believe that wishin’ and a-hopin’ is a plan.

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