Will It Buy You Forgiveness?

By Dan Nygard
Staff Writer

“NEW ORLEANS - Facing an unprecedented Gulf Coast environmental disaster, not to mention lawsuits, oil giant BP told NBC on Monday that while it was taking responsibility for cleaning up the giant undersea leak, the accident that triggered the disaster was not its fault.”
(“BP: Oil Rig Leak ‘Wasn’t Our Accident’: CEO to NBC: We’ll Clean it Up, but Rig Was Run By Transocean.” MSNBC 3 May 2010. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36912754/ns/us_news-environment/?GT1=43001)

In the eleven years I have been either active duty Army or National Guard, including sixteen months in another oil-rich part of the world, I have always understood one key aspect of leadership: if one of your subordinates f**ks up, it’s your fault. And if you, as a Sergeant or a Lieutenant, pay a civilian to build a school, and that school doesn’t get built, it isn’t the civilian’s fault, it is yours because you hired the wrong guy, and you failed to follow up on the progress of the job.

British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward has clearly had a different upbringing than me. As someone who has worked pretty hard over my career towards efforts that enable companies such as BP to buy low and sell dear, I wonder which elite school taught him about leadership. (and I am not going to waste a single minute of my life researching this sh*thead.)

This spill has occurred smack dab in the middle of one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the continent. This is where birds go when they fly south, for all you duck hunters out there. And BP was more than happy to “take responsibility” for the oil prior to the spill. How convenient for Hayward to have hired another company to do the actual work (sure sounds familiar to me) and to also take the blame when things fall apart.

In 1963 this guy from Hibbing wrote a song about war profiteers; I think it applies equally well to Mr. Hayward. Pretty late in the song, this guy sings “Let me ask you one question/ Is your money that good?” And are we finally ready, as a society, to start forsaking money and convenience just a little bit, in order to not destroy the nation where my little daughter will grow up?

And as far as Hayward is concerned, there is another line from that same song that about sums up his value as a human being: “You ain’t worth the blood that flows through your veins.”

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