I’ve been watching the cable news this evening, and currently CNN’s Anderson Cooper has started his broadcast with the plight of Americans currently "trapped" in Lebanon; an estimated 25,000 Americans are there. What’s been very overt tonight is CNN’s coverage of these folks, and how frustrated they are at how slowly they believe the effort is being handled by the US government, and the not-so-vague allusions to FEMA’s response for Katrina. They complain that they are unable to get through to the US Embassy in Beirut for updates and they don’t know what’s going on. There’s also sensitivity about Americans having to repay the government for getting them out - at $200 a person, either at time of departure or signature on a promissory note. (Apparently this is being rescinded by the Bush administration, per Fox News at 9PM this evening.)
These comparisons to the handling of the Katrina disaster are completely and utterly ridiculous; if I’m not mistaken, the State Department has always warned Americans travelling to Lebanon that events can get out of hand in a hurry there and anyone who traveled to Lebanon should have read the State Department’s May 2, 2006 travel advisory which was readily available on the State Department’s website. How can people, who willingly went to a country known for its instability, blame the US government for their response to get them out? Well, it doesn’t help that the State Department posted this on their Travel Advisory section of their website July 13th:
"This Travel Warning is being updated to alert American citizens that, due to ongoing security concerns in Lebanon, the U.S. Embassy has been granted authorized departure status. Family members and non-emergency American employees have permission to depart Lebanon. The Department of State urges American citizens to defer travel to Lebanon. This supersedes the Travel Warning issued on May 2, 2006. "
As any employer would, the US, who assigns embassy personnel to their foreign posts, must keep their promise to employees: anything happens in a foreign country, we’ll get your family out of there first and if your job is deemed non-emergency, you’re allowed to go too. This, my friends, is totally reasonable. These people represent our government in places we might not be too happy to go, and they do it every single day. Can you imagine the US trying to evacuate some 25,000 Americans out of Lebanon at once? Can’t happen: first, Beirut’s airport is blasted to bits, and contrary to popular thought, Cypress and their infrastructure wouldn’t be able to handle the traffic of all the Americans, much less all the other countries who are doing the same thing at the same time with their citizens. Like it or not, a staged evacuation is totally correct and is necessary to get people out in an orderly fashion.
This $200 evacuation charge is a pittance when you think of the fact that people CHOSE to go to Lebanon, even with travel advisories. I understand fear, but I’m sorry: if the Israelis are really targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, would that not be your responsibility and those you visit to make sure you aren’t in the vicinity of them? If you have enough money to purchase a plane ticket to Lebanon and stay, one would assume you have enough to pay a small fee if you wished to leave that badly. The words patience and appreciation might apply here, if you’re truly that frightened.
Note to State Department: If you really mean to stage the evacuations, for crying out loud, communicate it to the people who want to leave. Thus far, this looks like a chess match. One could speculate that at the expense of putting Americans at risk, you’d chose to save face by trickling Americans out of Lebanon (rather than a crisis exodus scenario) for the Israelis, who profess not to be targeting civilians and to show that as long as you’re not around Hezbollah, you’re perfectly safe. You can’t mean to do that, do you?
Update 11:15PM: Israel has ground troops in Lebanon and then I also found this blogger who believes some of the Americans coming back from Lebanon are Hezbollah supporters. And then there’s this, which while probably true about the dwindling supplies in Lebanon and destroyed infrastructure, borders on hysterics that Hezbollah would take US citizens as hostages. No, I don’t think so - that would pull Iran squarely into the picture and they truly don’t want that - they like being the spider spinning the web. It’s very passive-aggressive this way.
Technorati Tags: Breaking News, Current Affairs, Lebanon, Evacuations, Israel, Beirut, Cypress, State Department, Travel
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