Despite President Bush’s rhetorical gesture at accountability for his administration’s disastrous failure to respond swiftly to Hurricane Katrina, former FEMA head and Bush-Cheney campaign official, Michael Brown. appears to be the fall guy.
Incompetent political hack Michael Brown was deservedly forced to resign from his position as FEMA chief last week, but a memo published by Knight-Ridder news service just days ago reveals that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had full authority to respond decisively to the disaster without waiting on local and state officials to request help but delayed assigning the situation to the highest level of federal response.
The Bush administration, by all accounts, failed to move quickly enough in response to the disaster while tens of thousands of people waited for food, water, medical aid, and transportation out of the flooded areas. Thousands perished.
The administration did move quickly to blame local and state officials. Coming off of a month of vacation, Bush blamed the governor and the mayor of New Orleans. Some such as House Speaker Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) suggested that New Orleans should be bulldozed, earning him threats of bodily harm by former President Clinton.
Michael Chertoff, who lacks any emergency management administration experience despite the fact that responsibility for responding to natural disasters was placed under his authority, boldly stated that New Orleans residents were at fault for living in the city where natural disasters are known to occur (ignoring the fact that natural disasters occur even in Republican-dominated districts). Displaying an amazing lack of humanity and a propensity for toeing the government's line, right-wing media pundits echoed all of these sentiments in one form or another.
The Knight-Ridder memo also shows that Chertoff didn’t seem to understand what he was supposed to do in the event of a national disaster. A National Response Plan, written when his department was created, provides guidelines for the Secretary in the event of an "Incident of National Significance." Chertoff simply failed to follow the plan. Media requests for details about what Chertoff was doing while the disaster spread have been ignored or sidestepped.
While Michael Brown was expendable and President Bush moved swiftly and resolutely to remove him from office, the administration feels that it cannot afford to appear to be unstable enough to replace Chertoff. Unfortunately, the administration's failure to prevent a preventable disaster and to not be able to move swiftly enough to save lives has left a resounding impression all over the world.
Our safety requires that incompetents be removed despite whatever appearances that may result.
One of Bush's favorite analogies compares the federal government to a corporation with Bush as CEO. All of his aides and appointees are junior executives assigned to carry out policies in various departments.
Carrying this distasteful metaphor to a logical conclusion, when do the disgruntled shareholders – presumably the American people – get to remove the CEO who has bankrupted them, forced the corporation's resources into projects that have caused great harm to the company, and through willful neglect has caused destruction to important assets?
Bush’s America has become another Enron, but for some reason we don’t get to throw the CEO into jail.
In Bush's mind, the real shareholders are the several dozen million-dollar donors who've gotten everything they've wanted for five years. When will we have real democracy?
