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.

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?

Isn’t this just another excuse to bash the Iraq war?

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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:

“There are several reasons why that will not happen easily. (1) Existing laws will not allow the police powers the military will need to be effective. (2) The military is not trained for such a mission and (3) the ‘warfighter insurgency’ within the US military does not want such a mission and will strongly resist it. Not one civil affairs unit was deployed for either hurricane.”