Michael Brown Says States Don’t Have Enough Emergency Responders With National Guard In Iraq

You all remember Michael Brown, right? The guy who was in charge of FEMA during the Hurricane Katrina disaster? The “Heckuva job, Brownie” guy? Since being fired by the Bush administration he has been pilloried by the left for his poor performance during Katrina. Aside from the President himself, and perhaps Karl Rove, he may be the most hated Bush administration official of all time.
Until now, that is. Now the left loves him because he’s trying to blame the scope of the wildfires in southern California on…Iraq.

President Bush isn’t doing a heck of a job balancing National Guard call-ups to Iraq with states’ needs back home – and that’s crimping the government response to the California wildfires, according to the man who took the blame for the botched federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina.
Michael D. Brown, former chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told WJLA-TV reporter Rebecca Cooper in an exclusive interview Wednesday that the administration has not recognized how much of a “problem” it has with disaster response since so many National Guard troops are in war zones.
He did not directly criticize the White House response to the fires.
“The White House needs to recognize that we are overstretched and that there is a problem,” Brown said in a telephone interview. “They need to increase the size of the regular Army and stop relying so much on the National Guard.”

Or, alternatively, the states could increase the size of their emergency response departments and quit relying on the flippin’ military to solve all their problems. The National Guard was founded as a military fighting force, not as emergency responders like firefighters and such. Now, granted, I think we can all agree that it’s appropriate to call them out to help when needed, but that’s not their primary role. If a state like California doesn’t have enough emergency responders available to them they should hire and train some more. That’s the fix.
The military doesn’t exist to respond to natural disasters. The military exists to fight our nation’s wars.
This is the same argument California Lt. Governor John Garamendi tried to make last night on Hardball, and it sounds as stupid now coming out of Michael Brown’s mouth as it did coming out of his.