Badass Quote of the Day: Treat the environmental disaster like a war

Lt.-Gen. Russel Honoré

From Lt.-Gen. Russel Honoré, known for his hard-and-steady approach to dealing with issues and, particularly, his capable management of Joint Task Force Katrina in 2005 when FEMA (under director Michael Brown) had failed miserably, talking about what needs to be done regarding the Gulf BP oil spill [my emphasis]:

HONORÉ: We need to act like it’s World War III. You know, when we did the world wars, everything was mobilized. Nothing was left on the table. All branches of the military should be there working for Admiral [Thad] Allen, apply manpower as well as advanced command and control to find this oil and kill it.

Q: I mean, you’re treating this like it is a battle.

HONORÉ: Absolutely, and to the, for the people of the Gulf, this is their life, and it would be just like an enemy force invading the Gulf, taking over our shoreline. We’ve got to treat this like a war if we gonna get the effects we want, as opposed to an environmental spill.

He then goes on to say that leaving BP in charge of the clean-up is similar is “like getting mugged and having the burglar determine what your compensation is” and that our worry regarding the threat from the spill ought to be “equal to what we’re concerned with about terrorism”. I’m not usually one for war analogies, being one of those damn liberal pinko peaceniks and all that, but this is one situation where I believe it’s entirely appropriate. Fuck the bureaucracy, the red tape and the regulations; just send everything we’ve got in the damn Gulf and fight the oil like it’s talking smack about our collective momma before its pottymouth grows teeth.

(via @todayspolitics)