As noted here earlier, I don’t think it’s the time to point fingers at each other while there are still people to be saved inside New Orleans, although I do think the question of why troops were not used earlier to re-establish civil order is a reasonable one.
However, among the early analysis of what went wrong with the various governmental responses to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this Washington Post article makes it clear that the Bush Administration is not going to take all the blame for various shortcomings:
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. “Quite frankly, if they’d been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,” said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
As one my former professors used to remind me, “they fiddle while Rome burns and, to make matters worse, they do not realize that Rome is burning or that they are fiddling.”
Meanwhile, this City Journal article is a pretty darn astute analysis of what happened last weekend in New Orleans. Hat tip to Tom Smith over at the Right Coast for the City Journal piece.
I agree we shouldn’t point fingers… but why hasn’t the (ex)Compaq center opened their doors?!
In my mind a church is an organization ment to help people and to always have their doors open. So why hasn’t Lakewood Church not opened their doors to all the people pouring into our city of Houston? I don’t understand why these people don’t have people staying at the Compaq center.
I realize we can’t expect to make demands for people to help but I think when it comes to an organization who classifies themselves as a church and takes SO much money from people (to have the ability to buy compaq center) they should be questioned.
I wouldn’t doubt for a second Bill White asked for them to open their doors.
Guess who is going to be blamed for any deaths, as our Troops begin Combat Operations.
If you keep citing paraphrases of Leo Strauss, you’re going to start scaring people. 🙂
Don’t you know we’re not supposed to do that in public, Tom? Save that for the secret meetings! 🙂