| Subject: Americans right to ask: Where was President Bush's plan? |
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Date Posted: 04:40:03 09/05/05 Mon
Americans right to ask: Where was President Bush's plan?
By GEOFFREY CORN
As the nation watches in "shock and awe," the catastrophe in New Orleans is spiraling out of control. Word from the White House today is that the President George W. Bush, after having cut short his extended vacation last week, several days after Katrina struck, was now "very angry" at the slow response to the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
At the same time, Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was placed in the unenviable position of being the "excuse man" "fall guy" for the administration. What hypocrisy!
For Throughout the four years since Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has been telling us that his number one No. 1 priority is protecting the nation against a WMD terrorist attack and, if efforts to protect us fail, preparing to respond with full force.
Last week, a major American city, New Orleans, fell victim to the natural version of such an attack. The effects of Hurricane Katrina — widespread physical destruction and contamination rendering an entire city virtually uninhabitable — are virtually the same as the effects that might result from an attack by terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction.
So, Mr. President, where is "the plan"?
To understand why this national disgrace represents a "catastrophic failure" of this administration to deliver on the commitment it has made to the American people, it is important to understand why Michael Brown is rapidly becoming the scapegoat.
FEMA is simply not, as so many believe, the "great and good somebody else" equipped to swoop into any natural or man-made disaster and implement a comprehensive response plan. Instead, FEMA is charged with a much more limited role — serving as the federal coordinating agency to facilitate humanitarian assistance in response to such a situation. This is only one aspect of the much broader response that we were told would be planned, coordinated and executed by the Department of Homeland Security when that Cabinet-level agency was created. Ironically, upon its creation, Homeland Security absorbed FEMA and its limited budget.
It is the Department of Homeland Security, working directly for the president, that should have been prepared to implement a comprehensive response plan for Katrina. It is the president, and only the president, who is empowered by Congress to invoke the extraordinary emergency measures required to allow the massive military and policing response so many observers believe is now necessary to establish a "safe and secure" environment in the storm-affected areas.
FEMA is not empowered to take either of these measures, no matter how many times TV's talking heads ask Michael Brown why not.
The most fundamental problems associated with this disaster are emergency communications, population evacuation, establishment of extraordinary security measures, establishment of entry and exit routes, establishment of refugee centers and provision of medical care, food and water resources. Most of these do not fall under FEMA's responsibility. Clearly, they would all have been necessary in response to a terrorist attack.
The only reasonable conclusion to draw from this debacle is that no such plan exists; that for four years the president and his administration have been playing lip service to his supposed No. 1 priority.
Instead of ensuring that the federal government was prepared to launch into action to protect the inhabitants of any major city subject to such devastation, precious time and resources in the Department of Homeland Security were wasted on infighting over budgets, organization and turf.
This is the true disgrace, one that is only exacerbated by the president's feeble gesture of appointing his father and former President Bill Clinton to generate private support for the victims.
What the victims needed was a swift, coordinated, comprehensive federal response ordered by the president and implemented by a Department of Homeland Security fully prepared for such a task.
It is not President Bush who should be angry; it is the American people who should be. The "anger buck" should stop on this president's desk.
Corn is a professor at SOuth Texas COllege of Law. He retired from the Army as a lietenant colonel after serving 21 years.
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