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FEMA has failed. Enough is enough!
Once again FEMA is in the headlines, and it’s not because of the wonderful job they’re doing. It's because $85 million dollars worth of household supplies collected and intended for distribution to the victims of Hurricane Katrina,were given away to other states and agencies because FEMA was tired of warehousing them. Instead of making a difference for lives that remain turned upside down almost three years later, FEMA was spending more than a million dollars a year to warehouse them. When this story broke it was so bizarre and so unbelievable, that the system could go so wrong, that as far as I’m concerned it should be the final nail in the coffin. FEMA is contending that some of the supplies were donated but that other supplies of the so-called “starter kits” were purchased by FEMA. They also say that it was offered to the State of Louisiana but the offer was turned down, because at this point in time there was no need for the supplies. But what happened two years ago when these supplies were collected? Why were they put in a warehouse to begin with, and why weren’t they distributed immediately to the people on the ground in the hard hit areas. Surely in 2006, the need still was there, and surely they would have found plenty of people who really could have used the stuff, if the front-line people had communicated to the top agency officials. But internal communication is another area of failure for the agency that was so clearly exposed by Katrina, evidenced by its slow response in the wake of the deadly storm. But all of the blame can’t be put on FEMA. Most of the blame has to be put on an ineffectual Bush Administration, that was and still is out of touch, and who cares more about the fledgling democracy in Iraq than the people who make up the battered democracy in our own country. Enough is enough! We have arguably the best trained military in the world, and war after war they have proven that their response abilities, strategic infrastructure, and their ability to move supplies and personnel is unsurpassed. Why create a new agency, when everything is already in place? If the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard had been sent immediately to save the victims of Katrina, I can only guess that the suffering and helplessness of those victims would have been less, and maybe, just maybe, a few more lives might have been saved. Instead of sending our troops to the far reaches of the globe, putting them in harms way, our troops could be used when disaster strikes as the first line of defense in our own backyard, to help take care of our own. But not as a response to a call from the FEMA Director, but as a response to an order sent by the Joint Chief’s homeland security branch. I'll bet the military could use the 5.8 million dollars of FEMA’s 2008 Budget, and I’m sure they could use it much wiser than FEMA. And what about the troops themselves? Don’t you think their morale would be boosted, to be using their skills to actually save their own people once in a while, instead of always being called on to kill an often loosely defined foreign enemy? I understand that our history makes it an uncomfortable television scene to see the military deployed within our own borders, however in the face of the death and destruction that we saw in the aftermath of Katrina, I think even CNN and Fox News would have cut some slack and maybe even praised the government for speedy response, and all with the understanding that it was for the common good. Within hours of the winds of Katrina dying down, troops should have and could have been in position to begin the rescue mission of extricating victims from flooded homes. Instead it took the better part of three days to get them there. The men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces are often portrayed as heroes, and many of them are. What better aid to give such desperate victims than to be offered the hand of a hero, and to look up into the face of a hero who is acting on orders of benevolence. Not only would the victims benefit, but so would the morale of the troops as well as the image of the military. End the failure that is FEMA, and give support where support is needed, to our citizens and to our troops. William S. James |
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