Tag: Politics

Note: This sermon was presented on September 11, 2005 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola. Readings for meditation were Mending Wall, by Robert Frost, The Holy Qur’an 49:13a, and The Picket Fence by Christian Morgenstern, translated by Max Knight (links are to places on the web where the reading can be found).

It was 4 years ago that we woke to the news of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the failed attack on one unknown target. That morning, all of our lives were changed. Those who felt complacent were shaken. Terrorism before that was largely something that happened somewhere else. It happened either to other people, or only to those people courageous, or some of us probably thought stupid enough, to travel to the wrong places. For most Americans, however, it was somebody else’s problem.

Then the twin towers fell. Terrorism was no longer somebody else’s problem, something we could conveniently dismiss from our minds, assuming those responsible would take care of it. Terrorism and our national response to it became a topic of nearly everyone’s conversation and thinking.

As a result of that day, many things have happened. Decisions have been taken. Diplomatic (and not so diplomatic) missions have been launched. We’ve launched two foreign wars. We’ve reorganized and combined government departments. We have had changes in our national laws, intended by their authors to increase our security and make us safer.

To be specific, we did the natural thing. We started to build fences.

My question to you is this: After all of these activities, are we safer now than we were four years ago?

I’d like to suggest that you look at New Orleans right now as you try to answer that question. We have experienced four years of reorganization, which were supposed to have resulted in providing us with a new, extraordinarily efficient form of response to disaster. Besides being able to predict and thus prevent many terrorist attacks, we were supposed to be able to contain the results and prevent mass destruction.

Well, we have had a disaster. It wasn’t a surprise attack by terrorists. It wasn’t an unpredictable natural disaster. In fact, I watched the development of the computer models and the projected paths of Hurricane Katrina as the storm approached, and the forecasts were extraordinarily accurate and clear. We had warning. Insofar as one can have time when a hurricane is approaching, we had time.

But if the results appear to anyone to be exceptionally efficient, if those results are what one would expect after a crash program of reorganization, training, and planning, then I would guess that person has exceptionally low standards.

The results don’t live up to the expectation.

What is the problem? How can so much energy be expended in a cause with so little in the way of positive results?

Let me suggest that what we are watching is simply all the reasons why political and social action often fail to achieve their intended results, but we’re seeing it in exceptionally large scale.

Economist Henry Hazlitt, in his little book “Economics in one Lesson

I just got in my e-mail an article by Don Gaetz, superintending of Okaloosa County schools. You can find the article at A Port in the Storm on Gulf1 web site.

Now before I get to my point, let me first say that I am fully in support of what Don Gaetz said about the response here in northwest Florida. The actions I know of in response to Hurricane Katrina have been exceptionally good. The Okaloosa county school system, and its superintendent Don Gaetz are to be congratulated.

But there is a problem with the response to this disaster. It has pointed out serious problems with our system, and our ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks. We need to improve quite a number of things, not the least of these being our ability to respond flexibly in an emergency situation. Flexible response is not a natural ability of the bureaucracy, but it is something that we need.

This suggests one thing we need to look at: Keeping the bureaucracy from interfering with private efforts at relief. During a disaster career bureaucrats often try to keep up all the same standards of safety and health that they would outside of a disaster. It’s a nice thought. We don’t want to increase the death toll by being careless. But when the situation is bad, often the best way to improve it is to take risks. People who are capable of taking these risks and more importantly capable to deciding to take these risks should be permitted to take them.

But real solutions aren’t going to be found during this short time following the disaster. We can talk about who should be fired, who should be moved, or who is doing a good job. But especially in the giant Department of Homeland Security, there should be an investigation–a professional investigation–to determine what went wrong and who was responsible. That is, who was actually responsible, not who can be made to take the blame. I would suggest that such a professional review could be reviewed by congress and by the executive branch, but an investigation by congressional committee would largely give politicians a chance to posture, rather than actually getting the truth. Let disaster response officials from various parts of the country be made into a panel to look at the situation.

President Bush said that the results weren’t acceptable. At the same time he congratulated all those involved. Well, if everyone was doing things right, then the results would have to be acceptable. Somebody didn’t get the job done. Maybe there were many somebodies. I’m concerned with two possibilities: 1) That we will not manage to correct the very real problems that have been found, or 2) That we will place blame on people who were, in fact, doing the best that they could.

People whose political friends are in power tend to tell us not to point fingers. Those whose enemies are in power tend to say, “Throw the bastards out!” What we need to do is investigate carefully and throw the right people out, while thanking and congratulating the ones who did not live up to justified expectations about their performance.

Finally, I think we need to be more, not less demanding of our political leaders. Politicians make big claims and big promises, which they regularly fail to fulfill. We need to hold them to those promises, or use our power as voters to turn them out. I suspect that if we did start holding politicians to their promises they would make less of them, and start telling us more realistically what they can actually accomplish.

There’s a new essay on Philosoraptor dealing with Hurricane Katrina. Carol Roper makes some excellent points though she is somewhat harsher on the government than I was. What is clear is that we must find out specifically who is responsible, and hold them accountable. Saying the results are not acceptable, but all the people are great simply won’t work.

Read Katrina’s Lessons on Philosoraptor.

I’ve been following the news about Hurricane Katrina quite closely, and have noticed a large number of stories about how bureaucracy–generally people from the same offices that were created to aid in case of disaster–has been slowing down the response.

A good example of this is the CNN story Katrina medical help held up by red tape, that tells the story of a mobile hospital and medical personnel held up because they could not get permission to enter the disaster area.

Now I’m certain that the various people in the offices that have failed to find a way to allow these folks to get where they need to be have excellent reasons. They may be concerned about danger, or they may be wanting to make sure the hospital gets to the place where it’s most needed. But while they deal with those very good reasons, help is delayed.

I hope that we, as a nation, learn some important lessons from the fiasco of the response to hurricane Katrina. President Bush said that the results were not acceptable, but then he went on to praise all the people involved in producing those results. Somebody, probably many somebodies, must take the blame for the situation that resulted. If the results were not acceptable, then the system failed. When a system of this size fails, it means that people involved in it failed.

Various officials have complained that they did not anticipate that the disaster would be as bad as it was. But people prior to the event were talking about a disaster of even greater proportions! And this is a predictable disaster. No, we don’t know precisely where a hurricane will make landfall far ahead, but we do know the general area, and we do have an excellent idea before it hit. In this case, the predictions were quite accurate. The likely results could be known before it hit.

Yet our disaster response system failed.

We need to learn to think outside the box in terms of disaster preparedness and response. We are preparing for the likelihood of another terrorist attack. A terrorist attack could be more destructive, though likely in a smaller area, than Katrina. But more importantly, a successful terrorist attack would be predictable. We would not know in advance when it would happen, or where, or what the results would be. Unlike during the time that Katrina was approaching the coast, we would not be able to start prepositioning supplies.

What would our response be in that case?

Let me suggest some things that may be out of the box, but may be necessary in case of another disaster:

• Let rescue people enter the area before it’s perfectly safe.
  I know it’s standard wisdom to try not to lose rescue workers to the hazards of the disaster, but we may not have that luxury. There were and are people who are willing to risk their lives to help others. We should let them. The people in the area have no choice.
• Start moving toward the area immediately.
  In a hurricane, the supplies and rescue vehicles can follow behind the folks with the chain saws. It won’t be organized, but it will be fast. Organize the next phase, but get something started.
• Be willing to spend money on prevention.
  We should examine closely economies that were made in the budget for the New Orleans levee system. We should also look at our environmental policies. Some folks are saying that about 10 billion dollars might have been of substantial help in rebuilding the land area and wetlands in the Mississippi delta. If true, we’re definitely paying much more than that now!
• Plan for worse scenarios.
  Apparently the worst scenario that Homeland Security had for a hurricane hitting the Gulf Coast was category 3. Oops!
• Look at ourselves to see if we really do care less for the poor–the folks who couldn’t get out of New Orleans.
• Investigate thoroughly what went wrong, and implement the solutions.
  This can’t take another four or five years either. I’d be very surprised if we don’t have another natural disaster and terrorist attack both before that long. The government needs to change gears!
• Be personally prepared to act.

I’m not an expert on disaster, and I’m sure real experts could take me apart on some points, but those real experts had years to plan, and I think it is evident that they failed.

It’s up to us, the voters, to force a change!