Beloved's [No longer Free State] latest offering on his blog PING ....
I tried to post a comment after signing up at his blog, but it kept telling me I was anonymous, so I quit. Will post my comments here.
Well written and in general I agree with the concept of an AAR. I suspect that such a tool would be quite useful, but probably foreign to most civilian agencies. Having said that, I disagree that no commission is necessary. This was the worst tragedy ever to hit our nation other than the Civil War, and it cannot be excluded from the political landscape. In any case I sense the findings of the AAR (which I completely concur in)will likely demonstrate command and control issues that can only be resolved at the political levels, if then.
Well written and well thought out.
Thanks for pinging me, FMC. I like the idea of an After Action Review. My husband and I were discussing the idea of a "commission" and the fact that this would soon become the cure-all for what failed Katrina's victims. Both of us agreed that a commission would become a political football and lessons that need to be learned would become lost in the shuffle.
I have seen that approach used with safety programs in the oil field (only it is more of an after Accident review), with huge success in preventing future accidents. It is a lot safer out here than it was 20 years ago.
Funny, but so many people are conditioned to the blame game, any 10 people off the street involved in any incident will be playing CYA and blame shifting almost immediately. I have seen this in recent clips from NOLA.
It is tough enough to sit down with even industry professionals at the field level who have been assured that this is not a witch hunt to do a review of events leading to any incident, great or small, in an apolitical setting.
I really have trouble envisioning politicians being capable of doing this. The odd statesman might be capable, but on balance Congress cannot.
Certain members of Congress, however, are highly motivated by partisan political concerns to "do something" to give the appearance of "caring" in a non-election year so they can point back at it next cycle.
I seriously hope they will back off while the people who are handling the problems handle them, rather than disrupting the relief effort with this crap.