US Government incompetence in Lebanon evacuations
Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 09:51:36 AM PDT
First, a personal note: I have a good friend of Lebanese descent - her parents came to the US in the late 60's, and she was born here a few years later. It was only late last year that she was able to visit Beirut, and meet family (including her grandmothers) who she had only known through phone calls and letters. On her return, she was beaming with happiness, and immediately planned to go back during this summer. Unfortunately, other issues have prevented that... but when I first read about the
American tourists trapped in Lebanon, I thought, "That could've been her".
On Thursday, I believed the US government would do everything it could to get our citizens out of harms way, and quickly. Well, it's 6 days later...
Fairly soon after Israel started bombing Beirut, they took out the airport and the main road to Syria. Anyone wanting to leave would now have to rely on the US government to facilitate their evacuation. On Friday, July 14, the US Embassy in Beirut
issued this:
The Department of State and Embassy Beirut are working on options to facilitate the departure of private Americans who wish to depart and would require assistance in doing so, but these plans are not yet finalized.
At this point, I can still understand. It's only been 24-48 hours, and getting 25,000 Americans out would require some planning. The hope is that they actually
had some plans in the works, they just weren't "finalized". The next day:
The Department of State continues to work with the Department of Defense on a plan to help American citizens depart Lebanon. As of the morning of July 15, we are looking at how we might transport Americans to Cyprus.
Ok... it's been 3 days since the attacks started, and they've finally figured out
where they're going to take people. But wait, there's more:
The Department of State reminds American citizens that the U.S. government does not provide no-cost transportation but does have the authority to provide repatriation loans to those in financial need. For the portion of your trip directly handled by the U.S. Government we will ask you to sign a promissory note and we will bill you at a later date.
Then on Monday,
Sully gets this e-mail verifying it:
Most other goverrnments evacuating people here are actually flying them back to their home country without cost. But not the USG.
So now, they've got some plans to get Americans out (at a cost), but it's still
going to take some time:
[U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, Nicholas ] Burns called evacuation preparations "very well thought out, methodical and highly prepared" and said 15,000 Americans had registered with the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.
Burns attributed the small number of evacuees so far to the fact that many Americans have dual citizenship and are not under mandatory evacuation orders.
What I find interesting is that the US doesn't recognize dual-citizenship... or more to the point,
only the US citizenship matters. That's hardly a justification for the low number of evacuees.
Also interesting, and incompetent, is how the US is communicating with those trapped in Lebanon:
Jonathan Chakhtoura, a 19-year-old Lebanese-American student in Boston, said he registered with the U.S. Embassy electronically to be evacuated three days earlier, but he has not heard from the embassy except for an e-mail acknowledging his registration.
[...]
"Every time I call to see what's going on the lines are busy. When they answer, they say they don't know,"...
I'm not sure if they American Embassy realizes this, but some of those bombs being dropped are taking out Beirut's infrastructure. And if some power/telephone lines get blown up, I doubt there are many Utilities workers rushing to the site to fix them. "E-mail" doesn't seem like a very effective way to communicate with your citizens who are in a war zone. Maybe I'm just crazy...
The point is -- it doesn't matter how you feel about the conflict -- a week ago, innocent Americans were visiting a beautiful country, with a fairly recently democratically-elected government. Now, they're in a war zone... and I'm sure most of them want to get out. But once again, heels are being dragged. Incompetence rules the day. And innocent Americans are being asked to foot the bill.
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