#6534
#9
From: "Joan Seder" <jseder@eurekanet.com>
Subject: assigning blame changes nothing
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002
While most of JRL #6532 dealt with the geopolitical ramifications of the Russian people's recent Moscow tragedy, more immediately useful observations were added by Cathy Young (#5) and Andy Rooney(#7). Young mentioned the senseless deaths caused by the inefficient paramedic response and went on to say that national pressures on the press will prevent investigating this blunder. Rooney's humor reminds us that central planning doesn't fix much and when policy and attention remain focused on a few power brokers, ordinary Russians will still regard the management process as separate from their own daily concerns.
I suspect that a current kitchen table question is "why didn't our medical specialists come to the theater prepared with the necessary technicals?"
When the next question at the table is "what are we going to do to make sure this human blunder doesn't happen again" -- we'll know civil society and participatory democracy are underway. The blame game will not change what happened and media pressure to investigate will have little use as everyone has already figured out that the most simple and correctable component was the one that fell through the cracks.
The useful role the media can now play to pressure for change is to describe how simple organizational adjustments to the disaster response process will produce a positive memorial out of this tragedy.
As we all now know, no one is immune from today's reign of terror. As an American, I am fairly confident that my local emergency crews are adequately trained and equipped-- it's one good reason to pay taxes; if I were a Russian voter, I would put gaining a similar confidence way up on the must-do list.
To suggest that the Putin government continues the Soviet disregard for human life perpetuates the notion that the Russian people are not prepared to participate in civil society. What this situation illustrates is that coordination of services remains mired in the ineffectiveness of central planning. By having the necessary tools to mitigate the disaster in the wrong place -- it just repeated the age old problem of not knowing how to plan for the most productive use of its human and technical resources. Civil society isn't just making communities safe for commercial contracts -- it's also about creating problem solving communities.
When the Russian people agreed to become the experiments in everyone else's theoretical learning-curves, they didn't anticipate that ten years on they'd still be on the outside looking in at the agenda laden rhetoric banquet. The politics of the war on terror may lend itself to discussion; the grief over the deaths is a reality that no amount of words can change.
To commemorate those who died, the best memorial is to develop a medical response system that fully utilizes the Russian people's skills and humanity. If they need our help to do this, it's probably one of the best technical transfer projects we could offer. For us, it's a minor compensation for Russia's help after 9/11 and for the access to her oil reserve we may soon need.
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