And I you, but this time I stand ready to, as we say in my trade, join issue.

First, you are correct about the Seabees: “The difficult we do right now; the impossible takes a little longer.”

Second, you are correct about the downsides of the COE projects you mention. I think, though, that you make it appear that the problem was bad engineering when the problem was bad politics.

Unlike the Seabees, the COE has a standing mission that includes civilian projects. That has a downside. Take, for example, your correct statement of how COE work made Katrina worse. It’s not just New Orleans and it’s not just the Delta….every congressional district all the way up to Minnesota has input into how to tame the Big Muddy. Some of the results demanded of the COE in place A are in direct conflict with the demands from place B as a matter of physics and arithmetic….but politics in our time does not yield to physics and arithmetic. So they try to do both, and it’s not like the Seabees doing the “impossible,” a motto that refers to degree of difficulty and time considered together. Water only flows in one direction, no matter how much time you give it to change its mind and proceed uphill.

In the West, Congress was warned about fire hazard and the salmon die-off was documented sometimes not just run by run but fish by fish….and nobody was listening.

Both outfits are staffed by GIs. The Seabees have a more dangerous gig because they build in combat zones, often under fire. That’s the downside. The upside is they don’t have Congressman Hornswoggle breathing down their neck like the COE does.

Finally, if Mr. Trump ordered the COE to throw up auxiliary hospitals and they failed, then the failure would not be a failure of the leader to lead. And it’s not writ in stone that Trump could not order the Seabees into the breach, even if it’s not part of their standing mission…an emergency is an emergency, and a bit of that old Army-Navy rivalry might be good for the project.