Accepting Responsibility
November 30th, 2008 - 8:33 am
I read in the Times of India the following brief and very encouraging story:
NEW DELHI: Home minister Shivraj Patil resigned on Sunday, saying he felt obliged to take “moral responsibility” for the brutal Islamist attacks in Mumbai, an official government source said.Patil, who has been widely criticised in the media for failing to ensure India’s domestic security, sent his resignation letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh “owning moral responsibility” for the attacks, the source in the home ministry said.
All praise to Mr. Patil, who has done the honorable thing. Would that this practice took hold in the United States. We could have been rid of George Tenet on the 12th of September, 2001. Make that should have been. And quite a number of others, not one of whom “owned moral responsibility,” and looked for less challenging work.
Of course, if you don’t have responsible officials, the commander in chief is supposed to fire them. But he didn’t.
I fear that the responsibility does not lie with this one man, and that he is resigning not because it’s his fault but because he won’t be able to lead effectively with this hanging over his head.
Perhaps it’s time for high schools in India (and the USA) to begin mandatory firearms training, and for both countries to encourage responsible citizens to carry firearms.
The downside is that this might force the terrorists to go back to suicide bombings. But those are over quickly, and do not leave the nation dangling, apparently helpless for three days, while the terrorists show how they can pull people’s strings.
The question of ministerial responsibility in the US is a tricky one: we simply don’t have that tradition. And it conflicts with other American tendencies, besides the “it’s not my fault” tradition you noted, Michael.
1) It may not have been the official’s fault (speaking in general, not specifically of Mr. Patil), so why should he be forced to take the blame, instead of being allowed to fix the problem? By demanding that person fall on his sword, we may be denying ourselves the very one we need in a crisis.
2) Americans also tend to be forgiving. Perhaps too much so. We’re very inclined as a people to say “OK, you screwed up. Don’t do it again.” That makes it hard to tell someone “You’re fired. Go away.” Again, I’m not saying that’s a good thing, just how we seem to be.
In Mr. Patil’s case, if he’s been there several years and this atrocity was enabled by problems he failed to correct, then his resignation was indeed the right thing.
I wonder why GWB kept CIA chief Tenet when he became the 43rd POTUS? Why did he not fire him right after the 9/11 attacks?
Hey – the CIA is advertising for recruits on the radio. There’s a line about great benefits, one about adventure and a cute little joke about “intelligence.”
Don’t recall that “moral” or “responsibility” are used in the ad… though there was one line suggesting, you know, job security.
[Seriously - do they want to attract morons? If they want get-it-solved types - the sort who would take responsibility - they're going to have to offer something better than "security."]
It’s truly a pity W didn’t replace Tenet when he entered office. Who knows? There might never have even been a 9-11.
On the analytical side, The CIA is a glorified graduate school, part of the overbearing military industrial complex that continues the justify the billions of dollars to learn the following:
a) Iran is bad
b) North Korea is not good
c) Terrorism is reeally, really bad.
It is clearly a question of priorities. How many papers have to be pushed forward to the political leadership in Washington? The intel community is all about who gets the spoils.