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Not just a planning and execution failure but a "failure of the heart" « H » email link
I want to make sure I emphasize a point that I've alluded to in other posts: The administration's failure in planning and execution comes directly from a failure of the heart.
Anyone can be guilty of poor planning and poor execution. For example, patients die in hospitals because of poor practice. But what makes the administration's failures especially egregious is that its failures in practice have their roots in a lack of compassion rather than simple inability to develop and carry out plans.
The rightwing is making much of local failures but no one can say that local officials didn't care that Louisiana and Mississippi citizens were dying. (Go back and look at the video of Aaron Broussard, if you doubt me.) At the federal level, though, we have a fair amount of evidence that the mask of "compassionate conservatism" is falling away. When the hurricane hits a major US city and port, the President is...on vacation. Condi Rice is...shoe shopping. Dick Cheney is...well, no one is quite sure. Boy George ends his five-week vacation a couple of days early and manages to have Air Force One take a quick swing over the devasted area. Before actually getting down there to see how the citizens might be faring, he gets in a guitar lesson. Rightwingers made much of the fact that Boy George was on deck and at the helm after 9/11. Why do they give him a pass for being AWOL in this case?
We have further evidence that the dark forces just didn't care. Bush joking with Trent Lott about sitting on the porch of his vacation home. Momma Bush telling us that being packed into the Astrodome is better than what the citizens of NO are accustomed to. Former horse judge, Michael Brown having no idea what is going on down in NO...because none of his people were there. The constant refrain on rightwingers at all levels that "it's their own fault that they didn't get out before the hurricane hit." The constant reference to victims who were taking food, water, and other essentials from grocery stores as "looters". The anger about "looting" while failing to mention the sick and dying. None of these behaviors come from a Christian heart. Christ's directive to us was to take care of each other without condition. This administration and rightwingers in general seem not to have heard that.
posted Thursday, 8 September 2005
www.thesundaymorningliberal.blog-city.com
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