Cynical Nation

It's time that we stopped the Katrina blame game and started looking for solutions. Overlooked in the abundant incompetence shown by local, state and federal officals was the one group who executed their duties flawlessly:

The U.S. Coast Guard.

Soon there will be a plethora of plans offered to fix what went wrong, presented by both political parties. They will include privatizing the disaster relief effort, making FEMA independent of DHS, giving FEMA more funding or creating a whole new level of bureaucracy and giving it more funding. All of that will satisfy their desire to shift blame while spending more of our money, but it will not fix anything.

What we need to do is give the entire job to the Coast Guard along with restoring proper funding. The Coast Guard has always been the ugly step-sister of our armed services, asked to do increasingly more with less resources, and they do their job well, with nary a complaint.

And since 9/11, they've been asked to do a lot more and have come though. In addition to their typical maritime duties, the Coast Guard also performs law enforcement, search and rescue, and environmental protection. They have the expertise and track record to be the primary disaster emergency response organization.

New Orleans and the gulf states are finally getting relief and it is no coincidence that a Coast Guard officer is now in charge of the effort. Let's take the job away from the bureaucrats and give it to the Coast Guard, before the next crisis strikes.