We can help, fix blame at same time

To the editor:

Your recent editorial about Hurricane Katrina advised that we should concentrate on helping the victims of the hurricane and wait till later to affix blame. Is it your opinion that we citizens cannot do two things at once? Do you think we cannot simultaneously help those weather refugees and rapidly determine why the government failed to act? If you do, you are buying into the acceptance of a lethargic government that cannot do more than one thing at a time.

That's the kind of reasoning that led to the failure of our government to protect its citizens in the first place.

I would plead with the editorial staff of your newspaper to stop being an enabler to government incompetence and inaction and start being what a good newspaper should be: a diligent, probing investigator into your government's failure to act in the worst natural disaster in our nation's history.

Don't you worry about the government's response to the next man-made act of terrorism and its ability to manage such a crisis? Or is it your opinion that we should just trust our president and hope for the best?

JOE JACKSON, Frohna, Mo.