I've argued in the past that DHS was unwieldly and doesn't actually improve homeland security because it only adds another bureaucracy to one too many bureaucracies tasked with homeland security.
It's one thing to have 10 or 15 different agencies tasked with intelligence - to get the widest array of intel from all kinds of sources. And even that is debatable as each bureaucracy involved in intel gathering has its own agenda - to ensure funding for the next fiscal year instead of maximizing its assets' intel gathering capabilities.
It's quite another when you are trying to coordinate disaster relief. It becomes a huge mess. FEMA has always been castigated for slow responses to disasters. So, while the federal response to Katrina is much faster than it has ever been in the past, there are still problems that may have cost lives. New Orleans administrators figured that the whole job of disaster relief in the first 72 hours wasn't their responsibility, despite knowing that they'd be on their own for the first 72 hours as the federal government ramps up the relief. The onus is on state and local governments for the first few days to maintain order and to ensure that those who need to be evacuated are evacuated. It means using all the tools at your disposal, including hundreds of buses that sat unused and are unusuable because they've been flooded out [the Mayor Negin Memorial Motor Pool].
In coastal Virginia - which, by the way, has a large black population and plenty of Republican politicians - Mr. Judkins and his colleagues assume that it's their job to evacuate people, maintain order and stockpile supplies to last for 72 hours, until federal help arrives. In New Orleans, the mayor seemed to assume all that was beyond his control, just like the mayors in the 1960's who let the riots occur.I've also argued over the past week that when infrastructure is no longer capable of providing ingress and egress to an affected area, providing a swift response takes time. It's called logistics. Everything has to be airlifted into the striken area until roads and bridges can be repaired or bypassed. That takes time. People think this is an excuse, but the fact is that those bridges and roads have to be repaired regardless - and fixing them enables more vehicles to get into the affected areas to begin the rebuilding. More equipment can reach affected areas on ground instead of airlifting everything in.
They said their cities couldn't survive without help from Washington, which proceeded to shower inner cities with money and programs that did more damage than the riots. Cities didn't recover until some mayors, especially Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, tried self-reliance.
Mr. Giuliani was called heartless and racist for cutting the welfare rolls and focusing on crime reduction, but black neighborhoods were the greatest beneficiaries of his policies. He was criticized for ignoring social services as he concentrated on reorganizing the Police and Fire Departments, but his cold effectiveness made the city a more livable place and kept it calm after Sept. 11.
Yet Mr. Bush, with approval from conservatives who should have known better, reacted to Sept. 11 by centralizing disaster planning in Washington. He created the byzantine Homeland Security Department, with predictable results last week.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, often criticized for ineptitude, became even less efficient after it was swallowed by a bureaucracy consumed with terrorism. The department has spent billions on new federal airport screeners - with no discernible public benefit - while giving short shrift to natural disasters.
The federal officials who had been laboring on a one-size-fits-all strategy were unprepared for the peculiarities of New Orleans, like the high percentage of people without cars. The local officials who knew about that problem didn't do anything about it - and then were furious when Mr. Bush didn't solve it for them. Why didn't the man on the mound come through for them?
It's a fair question as they go door to door looking for bodies. But so is this: Why didn't they go door to door last week with Magic Markers?
Recall that on 9/11, the first thing that was done by the OEM was to close the bridges to all traffic other than people leaving Manhattan on foot and providing access solely to emergency personnel and construction crews with heavy equipment. It took time to gather heavy equipment in place and begin the search and recovery efforts in earnest. Huge cranes had to be brought in and assembled, paths needed to be cleared around the WTC site to enable the cranes to operate safely. Damaged structures around the site had to be assessed for structural integrity. All that takes time.
Now multiply the scene at Ground Zero by 90,000. We're talking about 90,000 square miles of affected territory. Millions of homes and businesses are affected. New Orleans may be the most visible scene of destruction, but it is far from the only one, or even the most devastated area. New Orleans got a glancing blow from this storm. The brunt was on the Mississippi coast, where Biloxi, Gulfport, and hundreds of other communities simply were washed away by a huge storm surge.
And meanwhile, we're not seeing the constant headlines of crisis and government ineptitude in Alabama and Mississippi. Why is that? Is it because those areas weren't badly affected? That isn't the case because Mississippi and Alabama were facing the brunt of Katrina when it came ashore. Is it because the federal response was greater there than in Louisiana? Not quite. There is still a feeling among locals that the federal government isn't doing enough.
So what is the difference? Simple. Leadership at the state and local levels. The Mississippi Governor, Haley Barbour, refused to let chaos reign. He took control and pushed the state into action to help the most affected areas. He knew that the federal response would come, but he'd be on his own for the first few days. We're now more than a week after the hurricane hit, and the federal response is continuing to ramp up and assist local efforts, but the press is focused on Louisiana where Governor Blanco needed 24 hours to decide on whether to accept federal aid. This, at a time when New Orleans could have gotten an immediate boost from arriving US Army or Marine units and prevent the collapse of the New Orleans police department, was a crucial mistake and a failure of leadership of the first order.
FEMA is supposed to provide guidance to state and local authorities before a crisis to make sure everyone is on the same page. They're supposed to make sure that everyone has a workable disaster plan.
FEMA is acting as though a flood of New Orleans was completely unforeseen. How? Every meterologist and amateur who can simply look at a topological map knew that a significant hurricane would flood the city. It doesn't matter that the flooding started after the hurricane passed or whether it was due to storm surge during the hurricane. It should have been a contingency for which everyone was familiar and capable of immediate response.
New Orleans dropped the ball because they had assets at their disposal which they frittered away [see the Mayor Negin Memorial Motor Pool]. But the federal government also failed to make sure that the local officials were capable of implementing the plans, and sounded an alarm to the New Orleans residents that the state and local officials were not up to speed.
And, it should be pointed out that there are probably many other cities and localities that are just as bass-ackward about their disaster preparedness as New Orleans was. Yet, few voters are willing to make an issue of this. Even fewer politicians are willing to raise this as an issue. Why? Your lives, and the lives of your fellow Americans are at stake. Wouldn't you like to know that the disaster plan of your community is up to speed and that everyone knows what to do in an emergency.
UPDATE:
You can be sure that folks are going to pore over the New Orleans disaster plan, which appears to be a complete and utter disaster itself.
UPDATE:
Ralph Peters has an interesting op-ed in today's New York Post. He suggests that the Bush Administration continues to make the same mistakes it has made in the past. It refuses to impose law and order in the early stages of a crisis - and points to the similarlities between the Baghdad occupation and New Orleans this past week. Instead of swiftly cracking down on looters and those committing violence, it took time to stage a response. In that intervening period, the lawlessness was seen by many as tacit acceptance, and the violence spiraled out of control.
Peters singles out FEMA for scorn, wondering what it has been doing since it was incorporated into DHS after 9/11.
What's striking is that the administration and the staffers at Homeland Security didn't seem to grasp all the resources available to them — or even what their responsibilities were. Anything but reassuring, the clumsy initial response to Katrina must have Islamist terrorists stroking their beards, smiling and thinking ahead.
As for the nonsense that the National Guard should never have been sent to Iraq but kept at home for emergencies like this one, well, the Guard doesn't have tanks, artillery and helicopter gun-ships for disaster relief. The Guard's primary mission is to help fight our nation's wars, and the Guard's state-by-state leadership has fought hard to retain that mission and the Guard's combat formations. Can't have it both ways.
The real problem is that we had plenty of resources, but failed to use them promptly.
Although our military has plenty on its plate, it appears that the Department of Homeland Security is in way over its head and needs help.
The Pentagon needs to be tasked to be prepared to provide swift and comprehensive disaster relief in the early days of a catastrophe. Existing plans are inadequate.
And this doesn't mean a "military takeover." It just means putting grown-ups in charge of saving American lives.
Yet, after all is said and done (and far more will be said than done), Katrina created a colossal tragedy without parallel in most of our lifetimes. Relief efforts have grown more impressive by the day and the speed of our recovery may surprise everyone. We're Americans. We don't sit around complaining. We roll up our sleeves and fix things.
UPDATE:
Does FEMA discriminate against computer users who don't use MSFT IE? Not entirely. You just have to install a bunch of patches to view the site and access the FEMA assistance pages.
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