Pentagon Finds That Iraq War Did Hurt Katrina Response
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Hurricane Katrina, The War On Terrorism, WarBut then again, so did local corruption.
Who shoulders the most blame? Fewer troops at home means fewer troops for disaster relief. Fairly logical.
From The Independent.
The report was commissioned by the Office of Secretary of Defence as an “independent and critical review” of what went so wrong. In a hard-hitting analysis, it says: “The US military has long planned for war on two fronts. This is as close as we have come to [that] reality since the Second World War; the results have been disastrous.”The document was compiled by Stephen Henthorne, a former professor of the US Army’s War College and an adviser to the Pentagon who was a deputy-director in the Louisiana relief efforts.
It charts how “corruption and mismanagement within the New Orleans city government” had “diverted money earmarked for improving flood protection to other, more vote-getting, projects. Past mayors and governors gambled that the long-expected Big Killer hurricane would never happen. That bet was lost with Hurricane Katrina.”
And did troops actually have to sneak off their bases to help?
The confidential report, which has been seen by The Independent, details how funds for flood control were diverted to other projects, desperately needed National Guards were stuck in Iraq and how military personnel had to “sneak off post” to help with relief efforts because their commander had refused permission.[...]
The report states that Brigadier General Michael D Barbero, commander of the Joint Readiness Training Centre at Fort Polk, Louisiana, refused permission for special forces units who volunteered to join relief efforts, to do so. General Barbero also refused to release other troops.
“The same general did take in some families from Hurricane Katrina, but only military families living off the base,” the report says. “He has done a similar thing for military families displaced by Hurricane Rita. However, he declined to share water with the citizens of Leesville, who are out of water, and his civil affairs staff have to sneak off post in civilian clothes to help coordinate relief efforts.” The report says deployment in the Iraq war led to serious problems. “Another major factor in the delayed response to the hurricane aftermath was that the bulk of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard was deployed in Iraq.
The conclusion? Not good.
…”The one thing this disaster has demonstrated [is] the lack of coordinated, in-depth planning and training on all levels of Government, for any/all types of emergency contingencies. 9/11 was an exception because the geographical area was small and contained, but these two hurricanes have clearly demonstrated a national response weakness … Failure to plan, and train properly has plagued US efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and now that failure has come home to roost in the United States.”
Remember the saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”? Well, since we’ve taken that stance in the Middle East, we need to apply the same mindset for our own country, otherwise the aftermath could be even worse next time.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2005 and is filed under Hurricane Katrina, The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 3rd, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Odd that a hard-left, editorially anti-American British paper like the “Independent” would be able to scoop all the U.S. media on an internal Pentagon report.
Your headline (and the Independent’s) gives the impression that Iraq was the gist of the report. But the reporting makes it clear that it was not so. Iraq only rates a couple of paragraphs in the Independent story, and those well down in the story, in the second leg. They amount to saying response would have been better of the Louisiana National Guard had been in Louisiana instead of Iraq.
Maybe so, but I’m not even convinced that would have made much difference, since 1. you’d still have to mobilize and equip the guard and dispatch it, and 2. a great many of the Louisiana guardsmen would have been caught up in the evacuation or the flooding itself, and others would have been incommunicado because of the infrastructure damage.
Instead, the report seems to be focused on the overall planning shortcomings of the current military leadership, which has caused us trouble in both Iraq and Louisiana (as per your final quoted paragraph).
One paragraph I found telling deals with why the U.S. military is not in a position to ride to the rescue in domestic calamities:
October 3rd, 2005 at 11:57 pm
Odd, but not uncommon anymore. It’s easier to leak this stuff to the foreign press because they’ll actually run it.
You think it wouldn’t have made a difference, and I don’t really know. I guess we’ll never know, but let’s hope we learn something from this disaster.
October 4th, 2005 at 11:03 am
Isn’t this just another excuse to bash the Iraq war?
If we had as many troops involved in a widely supported, and succesful war; would the questions about military response be just as many?
I doubt it. The primary objective of the military is to fight, not to rescue people from flooded homes. I’m sure there are people in the US that would like to see those roles reversed, but probably not a real high percentage. You can’t have it both ways without drastically increasing the size of the military every time you go to war. Do we really want to have a draft, just so we can be “prepared” when a national disaster strikes?
I say this just lends credence to the argument that you shouldn’t depend on the government to save you in times of crisis. Be prepared to take care of yourself. However, I will now look forward to receiving a fat check from the government the next time a blizzard (or some other disaster) hits my neck of the woods!
October 4th, 2005 at 11:39 am
Well, if you’re of the mindset where you think any negative news about Iraq being tied to our safety at home is bashing, then yes. If you’re looking at this as one potential reason our response wasn’t as good as it could have been, then no.
Well, if a disaster virtually demolishes your home and your city, I hope the federal government will be there for you too. But being the responsible person you are, I hope you take absolutely no money from them to rebuild.
October 4th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Justin,
My point exactly. If our military is at war, we are not in a position to
respond to a natural disaster. Since the primary role of the military is
war, it shouldn’t be expected to be the primary responder to a natural disaster. If the American people want it to be the primary responder, than they need to be prepared for a larger military that is capable of filling both roles.
My last point was just a stab at the entilement mentality that the government is now fostering. I feel bad for the people that this happened to, and I gave my fair share to the Red Cross, but I don’t want my tax dollars going to handouts just because of bad luck. It wasn’t the government’s job 20 years ago, why have they decided it is now?
October 4th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
If we hadn’t been in Iraq, we’d still be reading “Did Afghan Occupation slow Hurricane Response?” stories today.
October 5th, 2005 at 12:03 am
Cal, I would have to say probably not.
Our troops would have been back at their bases since the Afghanistan conflict didn’t last that long. Sure, our troops are still over there, and maybe if we hadn’t gone into Iraq more soldiers would still be in Afghanistan, but not nearly as many as we have in Iraq.