Assessing Responsibility

From Sirotablog:

Imagine a burning apartment building. In such a scenario, you'll have the organized crowd who already has checked for stairwells to exit and will be making sure everyone gets out of the building, running through mental checklists. Emotionally caring people will get outside and immediately work to get blankets and hot chocolate to people standing in the cold and comforting people who are scared. Firefighters will be running into the building to fight the blaze (people with "firefighter" style personalities are often also the sort of people who end up starting fires). And fire inspectors will spend time looking at evidence in order to determine who started the blaze.

Each of these actions requires different strengths, but all of them share the fact that they require leadership skills. But there's something else that you could do outside a burning building, something that shows absolutely no leadership: patently denying that the drunk kids playing with matches and everclear had anything to do with the blaze.

Let's face it. The Bush Administration diverted money from safety projects in Louisiana to the Iraq War. They have helped stop the country from doing anything about global warming, despite the fact that climate change may be partially responsible for triggering this event. And the fact that they've relied so heavily on guard troops and equipment means that we're facing critical shortfalls in Louisiana.

Of course, the people at RedState are merely saying that the left is using human tragedy as a way to attack the Bush Administration. Look, the simple truth is that many of these problems were foreseen, but advice was ignored, and Bush was running around playing guitar while Rome burns. That's not leadership, it's incompetence and calling it out is called accountability. In other words, some of us need to be the fire inspectors, because getting to the truth ain't exactly the Bush Admin's strong suit.

My earnest hope is that Bush achieves understanding of what he's done to this country in the short interval between the trap door dropping out from under him and the rope jerking taut.