Haiti relief slow to get to victims. Who's at fault?

The fingers are already being pointed at the US for delays in Haiti relief efforts. The fingers are not being pointed by outside sources but from within the US itself. There were many at fault for the slow response to Hurricane Katrina. The response to the Haiti disaster was initiated sooner, but logistic made it harder to deploy. There were also issues of Sovereignty to consider and getting the proper requests and permission to enter the country were slow in coming from a government that had itself been devesated by the earthquake.

The Republicans want to pin the blame on Obama, I suppose as payback for the blame that was pinned on Bush after Katrina.

But the real cause of the delays and confusion is simply this, it's a big disaster, it's utter chaos and the massive international response is coming from all directions without any single coordinating authority to manage it all. It's not as if there is some sort of disaster coordinator who knows everything that's going on in the disaster zone and has a complete inventory of all the supplies, personel and equipment available to be assigned in an organized manner to exactly where it needs to be.

It is simply the nature of disasters. No matter how much we try to be prepared, they just always seem to be the most unexpected things at the most unexpected times in the most unexpected places. While we may make contingencies for disasters that we think could possibly happen in a particular place, like a Hurricane in Florida, the circumstances of each is so different that we always seem to be caught short in some way. It's not always possible to be totaly prepared to quickly deal with every complication of any disaster, even in disaster prone areas.

So it was reported that  on one side of the Port au Prince, there was no emergency food getting to the people, while on another there was three times as much as was needed. The trucks just show up and no one really knows where its all going, it just ends up somewhere.

So no one is really at fault. Whether it's a single individual or a group or a nation or the whole world, responding to disasters in by it's very nature a complicated confusing and uncoordinated action. As much as the American military forces are trying to coordinate operations, there's only so much they can do, they don;'t control everything and there are alot of different responders from different countries who are not under the control of the USMilitary. To try to rein everyone in would only create more confusionand slow things down.