Fire Them Both

Fire Michael Chertoff and Michael Brown. It's that simple.

Their response to the catastrophe in New Orleans has been utterly unconscionable. Let's leave aside for a moment the absolute failure to plan for and implement what plans they had for a crisis that was known to be coming; that failing rests on the shoulders of more then just these two men. No, what these two have failed at is their response to the crisis, which has been marked by an unjustifiable defensiveness, bone-headed stubborness, and utter cluelessness. If you have any doubt about the utter disconnect between what these two were saying and what was happening on the ground, CNN summarizes it for you here:

"Violence and civil unrest

Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.

CNN's Chris Lawrence: From here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. We're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. The police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street."

These are only one of the serious misunderstandings of the situation on the ground that Brown confessed to just CNN. Add that to his remarks attributing the blame for the high number of dead on those who "chose" to stay in New Orleans, and you clearly have a man who has neither the class nor the competence for his job.

Then there's Chertoff. People began pouring into the New Orleans Superdome on Tuesday, and the Convention Center on Wednesday. By Thursday morning CNN was reporting that there were thousands of people stranded at the Convention Center who had been told to go there to seek help, and yet Chertoff is on CNN at nearly the same time telling the news anchor he had not "heard a report" of such a thing. At other times he patiently explained that since helicopters cannot fly in a hurricane, relief could not be more forthcoming. Last time I checked, the flooding started AFTER the hurricane had largely passed by, but apparently Chertoff can't be bothered to watch The Weather Channel anymore then CNN.

Their public statements to the media have been so wildly out of touch with what's been going on on the ground, that even normally pliant interviewers and news anchors have felt driven to point out the stark contrasts to Brown and Chertoff in interviews. Robert Siegal of NPR cornered Chertoff in just such an exchange yesterday:

"When [Chertoff] cautioned Siegel about the danger of relying on 'anecdotal rumors' of people in dire straits, Siegel said, no—these are facts presented by reporters who have covered war zones. There are 2,000 people at the convention center in need, he said. Having finally broken through the steel plate that is Chertoff's skull, the secretary confessed he hadn't heard those reports—reports that the television networks were documenting, live, with their cameras. Chertoff promised he'd look into the matter."

When faced with the worst natural disaster in America in decades, and more refugees displaced then since the Civil War, these two were more interested in making excuses for the federal government's too-little-too late relief effort, minimizing events on the ground(either to downplay the government's failures or out of sheer cluelessness), and blaming the victims for the crisis. A worse response from the two men responsible for coordinating disaster relief in this country simply could not be possible; in fact it would have been better if they had simply not shown up to work Tuesday morning and let someone else take over. There is simply no excuse for the way they've acted; certainly no excuse for the men who have supposedly been planning for possible terrorists attacks that could be even worse then the flooding. Can we trust these men in another crisis? I don't think so. It's time to show them the door.