I agree with Rex that rescue and survival are far more important than blame.
Rex: We're all outraged. We're all in shock and disbelief. We all want to blame someone. But can we at least have a national day of mourning before we commence with this national day of blaming.
Here's my suggestion: Keep writing all your evidence-of-responsibility posts but hold onto them for a few days. Use those days to help people find loved ones and to figure out what you can do to help. Raise money for relief causes. Figure out how your church or civic club or neighborhood can re-settle an evacuee family. Then, after a week or so (September 12th at the earliest) go ahead and start back flooding the blogosphere with blame.)
Unfortunately, the longer it takes to figure out who did -- or, more to the point, didn't -- do what, the easier it seems to be to shift the blame. Why does blame matter? It's not as if anyone in charge is going to be charged or as if it can change anything that happened in the past week. But it can -- and should -- help us understand how not to let it happen again.
I hope that anyone collecting facts about the events leading up to Katrina and the subsequent chaos continues to do so. The invective, the politics, the anonymous fingerpointing -- that can wait.
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