There’s usually a warning.
Before Hurricane Katrina, multiple reports cautioned that New Orleans risked massive flooding.
Prior to the 9-11 attacks in New York and Washington, the CIA warned President Bill Clinton that al-Qaeda planned to hijack commercial aircraft to target America.
Leading up to the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) (my former boss) warned Gen. Mark Milley that the United States abandoning Bagram Airfield was a dumb idea.
And three months prior to what is shaping up to be the most expensive disaster in American history, former President Donald Trump spent seven minutes on the Joe Rogan show warning about the dangers of California’s water and forest management.
Sadly, it seems warnings are seldom heard. In fact, few people like a prophet, especially when they’re right. Since the mythological Cassandra predicted the fall of Troy, human nature has spurned prophets and their warnings about the future.
The U.S. military falls prey to the same aversion. The Pentagon excels at after-action reports in what commanders call a “hotwash.” It is the wargaming beforehand that often gets flubbed, fueling the old saw that armies always prepare to win the last war they fought.
It doesn’t help that our intelligence agencies so often get it wrong. During Biden’s administration alone, they trotted out doozies such as: the Afghan government could withstand the Taliban for 6 to 9 months after American troops withdrew; Ukraine would fall to Russia within days of an invasion; and, just two weeks before October 7, that everything was quiet in the Middle East. Swing batter batter batter.
The main problem with American intelligence and leadership at the moment is a lack of imagination. Imagination runs on intuition and creativity — traits that aren’t first to mind when most people think “government employee.”
Yet we need creative leaders who ask themselves “how would I handle a similar event?” and “what’s the next crisis most likely to hit my area of responsibility?”
It’s a mode that seems to come reflexively to Trump. Perhaps it’s the mindset he’s cultivated as a developer — a muscle that helps him identify the most likely risks and rewards the future might hold. The 45th and soon-to-be 47th president seems likewise drawn to other imaginative people like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are currently reimagining the scope and breadth of the federal government.
Analytical minds can help too. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis can’t predict the next disaster to hit his state, but clearly spends time planning his administration’s response to the most likely: a hurricane. More than 500 tropical storms and hurricanes have hit Florida, so it’s a safe bet that another one will at some point.
Likewise, California is burdened by many wildfires each year. Los Angeles is enduring one of the worst droughts in 130 years. On top of these conditions, Santa Ana winds bedevil the City of Angels regularly this time of year. It doesn’t take an analytical prodigy or creative genius to predict that a fire or earthquake are the two highest-probability disasters to threaten America’s second-largest city.
Yet instead of anticipating and preparing for a deadly fire, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass not only cut $17.6 million for the LAFD in her last budget, but proposed an additional $49 million reduction for the fire department just last week according to a memo leaked to the Daily Mail. After these decisions, where was the mayor while her city burned? She was 7,500 miles away, representing an absent President Joe Biden in Ghana, Africa.
Yes, this is the very same Karen Bass who took shots at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during 2021’s freak Texas ice storm, claiming he fled the state “in the middle of a deadly crisis” and that it was “part of a larger pattern of the GOP abandoning folks.”
Project much, Karen?
Let’s hope that mayors and leaders across the country are taking note and preparing to do better for their communities.
Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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