Finding someone to “blame” for the damage caused by hurricane Katrina is impossible. The inquiries into all of this by the special House committee, the media and every individual aren’t really searching for a way to prevent future disasters, they are all looking for someone to blame.

This was apparent yesterday in the 6 hours of questioning between the inquiry committee and Ex-FEMA Chief Michael Brown. At times Brown wasn’t even asked questions, he was just reprimanded and insulted.

When he was asked how he feels he failed his responses were 1) He should’ve held more press briefings. 2) “My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional.” (hmmm, so 2 days before Katrina hit?) 3) “I regret that I was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together, I just couldn’t pull that off.” ( which really means = “Blanco and Nagin messed up, my only failure was in not recognizing how incompetent they are”)

In the exchanges between Brown and the committee we can see everyone wanting to blame someone else. The committee members want to blame Brown, the majority of people already do and ever since the press outed his lack of work experience that landed him at the head of FEMA, most people assume him to be a liar who got in over his head; therefore, it must be his fault. Brown is obviously feeling the pressure of everyone’s finger pointing at him, so he’s attempting to shift the blame - to Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.

The bottom line is - and always is in these situations - everyone could’ve done something different. I don’t mean to minimalize the situation, I’m saddened by the loss of life of so many individuals, not to mention the thousands of displaced people who no longer have homes, but I think the reactions of everyone in this crisis represents the reactions we all have when we don’t want to be blamed for something - we find minimal, if any, wrongdoing on our part and place everything that went wrong at the feet of someone else.

The result of this circle is always the same; nothing is learned, mistakes and behaviors are repeated and we never advance.

That’s why I think everyone stuck on “who’s fault is it?” is stuck on stupid. Let’s face it - it’s really nature’s fault, but we can’t haul her up infront of the House committee, so Brown will have to do, followed by Nagin, Blanco, Bush, etc. It’s nature’s fault because no matter how well prepared we are for an incoming storm, or how well prepared we are for the aftermath, we are dealing with an improbability factor - people.

A mandatory evacuation can be issued, but that doesn’t mean it will be followed. Last week with the advance of Rita, a major section of southeast Texas was evacuated, they began 6 days before the storm was due to hit and there were still people who remained behind and lots of complications with an evacuation that was solidly planned. So when do we stop complaining, be more reasonable and just push forward to do the best job we can? (Probably when we are no longer stuck on stupid.)

I don’t want to blame anyone for what happened with Katrina, I just want to know what is going to happen now - be it more training, more budget, new legislation, etc. I think results are going to take you 100 times farther than blaming someone will; however, the only results we’ll probably see are more forced resignations; for some reason people seem to be satisfied with the removal of the person heading up a poor system, but are content to keep the failing system intact. Was Michael Brown the right man for FEMA Director? I don’t know - I don’t care. I just don’t want to see him become the sole reason that Katrina is the disaster that it is, because when he takes on that role we do not learn anything and this will happen to us again.

Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

If this logic is true - and I believe it to be so - I have to deduce that if we are consistently “stuck on stupid” - we are stupid - and if so, can’t we change from stupidity to accountability by changing our habits?

Again, let’s follow the example of General Honore (and advice of Aristotle) and all take up some accountability for our own actions instead of getting stuck on stupid in a crisis.
MORE
Hurricane Katrina timeline
Article - Brown’s Revisionist History

Category: General Thoughts

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 2:05 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.