Just one wish...
on a late Friday night. Can the President PLEASE NOT INVOKE 9/11 or Iraq in one single speech he gives? I'm willing to bet part of the reason people are starting to turn on him is they think he's getting repetitive, like LBJ on Vietnam. Or Nixon too, for that matter, when it came to speeches from the Oval Office.
The hurricane's only link to those other events is it showed how we haven't learned a damn thing after four years. We still can't get the response right. And, by the way, I'm not absolving the local officials of all responsibility. It's just that at the point the day before where the President declares a federal state of emergency, HE has primary responsibility at that point, because HE made it a federal and not a state problem.
Like I said before, he knew the day before that things could have been really bad, so why couldn't we get some troop transports down there to airlift these families to Houston? It's like an hour's flight time. We could've sent people to other air bases and such. The military is the primary response vehicle in these situations, so why not get them spun up and moving? There are 186 active-duty and 222 Air National Guard, so getting anywhere from 25 to 100 of them shouldn't have been THAT difficult, considering it was known for days Katrina was coming. Have these people head to whatever airfield, or hell, dirt strip (the Hercules is rough-strip capable) and fly them out. If there were 25 aircraft, they could move 2500 people at a time. Four flights, and that's 10,000 people.
I don't know, it's possible that what I'm saying is impractical, but the South has a lot of air bases left over from the Cold War, and I think it could've been done had we mobilized these soldiers earlier. On Saturday, the president made it a federal problem, so why the hell didn't we think creatively? I mean, we supposedly had this great plan, and it sucked. I think next time things like this should be considered. Airlift troops in, have them organize it, and get people out. This whole thing has become a CYA, and that is not acceptable.
By the way, I think at this point, we need to stop worrying about ending the estate tax and things like that. We have to pay for this somehow, and there isn't anything more that could be cut from the budget. This is on all of us to do our fair share. Sorry, overly rich people, your vacation from civic duty needs to be ended.
The hurricane's only link to those other events is it showed how we haven't learned a damn thing after four years. We still can't get the response right. And, by the way, I'm not absolving the local officials of all responsibility. It's just that at the point the day before where the President declares a federal state of emergency, HE has primary responsibility at that point, because HE made it a federal and not a state problem.
Like I said before, he knew the day before that things could have been really bad, so why couldn't we get some troop transports down there to airlift these families to Houston? It's like an hour's flight time. We could've sent people to other air bases and such. The military is the primary response vehicle in these situations, so why not get them spun up and moving? There are 186 active-duty and 222 Air National Guard, so getting anywhere from 25 to 100 of them shouldn't have been THAT difficult, considering it was known for days Katrina was coming. Have these people head to whatever airfield, or hell, dirt strip (the Hercules is rough-strip capable) and fly them out. If there were 25 aircraft, they could move 2500 people at a time. Four flights, and that's 10,000 people.
I don't know, it's possible that what I'm saying is impractical, but the South has a lot of air bases left over from the Cold War, and I think it could've been done had we mobilized these soldiers earlier. On Saturday, the president made it a federal problem, so why the hell didn't we think creatively? I mean, we supposedly had this great plan, and it sucked. I think next time things like this should be considered. Airlift troops in, have them organize it, and get people out. This whole thing has become a CYA, and that is not acceptable.
By the way, I think at this point, we need to stop worrying about ending the estate tax and things like that. We have to pay for this somehow, and there isn't anything more that could be cut from the budget. This is on all of us to do our fair share. Sorry, overly rich people, your vacation from civic duty needs to be ended.
posted by Thad at 11:48 PM
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