It's Not All Bush

In the wake of Katrina, it seems everyone, including this blog, wants to jump on the president's back for the administration's failures in preparing for and dealing with the disaster in New Orleans. In all fairness, though, it's not all the administration's fault. Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum of the National Guard speaks of the unexpected breakdown of the New Orleans police force.

The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans. Once that assessment was made, that the normal 1500 man police force in New Orleans was substantially degraded, which contributed obviously to less police presence and less police capability, then the requirement became obvious and that's when we started flowing military police into the theater.

This breakdown in civilian law enforcement contributed to delays in getting military law enforcement in place. The preparations were for the National Guard to play a support role, assisting the civilians. With the civilian force substantially degraded, additional forces had to be assembled to play a more substantial role. The general argues that going in with inadequate force levels would have actually made things worse.

Some people asked why didn't we go in sooner. Had we gone in with less force it may have been challenged, innocents may have been caught in a fight between the Guard military police and those who did not want to be processed or apprehended, and we would put innocents' lives at risk. As soon as we could mass the appropriate force, which we flew in from all over the states at the rate of 1,400 a day, they were immediately moved off the tail gates of C-130 aircraft flown by the Air National Guard, moved right to the scene, briefed, rehearsed, and then they went in and took this convention center down.

One can debate that point and its applicability to a law enforcement environment, but it is a sound military principle: you don't go in without overwhelming force.

When criticizing the administration, one has to make the distinction as to what could and should have been anticipated, and what could not have been. While the administration can rightly be faulted for not anticipating a levee breach, when all their gamed scenarios pointed to that, it's not clear to me they can be faulted for not anticipating the breakdown in civilian law enforcement and the repercussions that had.