This is a letter in response to "Deadly Bureaucracy In Katrina's wake, red tape too often trumped common sense. BY BOBBY JINDAL Thursday, September 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. "

MUDVILLE GAZETTE has more on the blame game.

The Blame Game and why it matters!

While I have nothing but the deepest respect for the work that Rep Bobby Jindal is doing for the State of Louisiana I utterly disagree that we shouldn’t right now look at who is at fault. Something in our society seems to be preventing us from actually ever fixing anything and my guess is having the sort of blameless society that today’s managers seem to love is part of the reason.

The 9/11 tragedy is a good case in point. Can anyone name a single person who was even reprimanded for the greatest intelligence failure to befall this great nation? Did any of the lawyers who advised against searching Moussaouis computer get even a slap on the wrist for being overcautious? What about those in the intelligence agencies who played bureaucratic warfare against each other rather than against the enemy as Able Danger has shown? No not a single person anywhere was held responsible. That’s terrific if you are tremendously worried about a person’s self esteem and a terrible nightmare if you are worried about correcting a culture of mediocrity.

Now again after a National Tragedy we are hearing the calls that we not point any fingers at anyone. What nonsense! Right now when the mistakes are fresh in everyone’s memory is EXACTLY the time we all as a people must point fingers and demand accountability. Naturally no one in the Government is going to be very thrilled about this “blame game” but tough luck. They have a lot of benefits for being Governor, Senator, Mayor, and President, with those benefits comes the responsibility of being blamed when it all goes wrong. Does this mean we stand them up against a wall and shoot them? No it simply means that we keep them honest by letting them know in no uncertain terms that we are watching and will hold them accountable. This is sadly what has been so badly missing in Louisiana politics as we have known, all of us, that our political system was a joke. But we as a group of citizens thought it was sort of funny that we were so inept. Real funny now.

Where does the press stand in this matter? Their hands are dirty as well since their primary responsibility is not to become cozy with the government but to penetrate it and hold its feet to the fire. Where was the investigative reporting? Why are we still getting such a small part of the story of the tragedy?

In the end we all must look in the mirror and point the finger at ourselves. We failed, we got exactly the government we deserved and worked for. Or didn’t work for as the case may be. But we have a chance to rectify that now but that won’t come from not holding people to account. Our founding fathers would have been appalled by our lack of interest in politics in general. It would shock them to the core to imagine that we would allow something as potentially destructive as a Government to function without our interested oversight. Its time to start taking our responsibilities seriously again.

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