Many observers including the media on the ground in Haiti, such as NBC's Brian Williams and CNN's Anderson Cooper, are starting to raise valid questions about why first-response aid is so slow in arriving, while stuff is piling up at the airport. Even search-and-rescue teams with dogs, and doctors and nurses, who should be the first at the scene, have found it difficult to even land or could not get transport after arriving at the Port-au-Prince airport. The impression is that the US is holding off everything until troops arrive.
Retired Lt.General Russel Honoré,who is of Louisiana Creole background and who led the US Army's belated rescue operation into New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, has been in the forefront of this criticism.
On CNN's AC360 with Anderson Cooper last night (Jan. 15), Cooper questioned the General about the slow response.
Anderson Cooper: Has this been too slow?
Honoré: We have to come off script and do some things that are not in the plan. One of ‘em is: Search and rescue and evacuation trumps security. When you’re saving people’s lives, you will not have absolute security. We ran into the same thing in New Orleans . I can give you several examples of where people were talking about security and held up the evacuation of the people out of the Superdome and the Convention Center.
AC: I’ve often found, you know, that security folks, god bless ‘em, we all need them in a lot of situations, but if you only listen to them, you end up you’re limiting yourselves in your ability to go out...At a certain point you gotta say, you know what, it’s just time to treat people, you know what, maybe our own lives are at risk, it’s a gamble, but I can tell you for sure people are going to die tonight and their lives are even more at risk.
Honoré: I agree with you, and we’re gonna have to adapt and overcome, we’re gonna have to engage the people in Haiti, try to get ‘em organized in work groups to clear landing pads for those helicopters, clear landing pads to put supplies on the ground and clear landing pads so we can stock equipment and clear landing pads so we can put tents up. The people of Haiti can do this, they’ve shown, they’ve done a good job in being the first responders in getting their citizens out of those buildings...
Just because these people are poor, it doesn’t mean they are dangerous. We ran into this same thing in New Orleans. Everybody got their flak jacket and M-16 on. It comes down to, my understanding is that people were afraid because they were poor and they were in the street and they were in crowds. It’s nothing to be scared of...You got to move and move now.
[Video of CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta tending to abandoned patients in medical tent as Anderson Cooper explains the doctors and nurses were forced to leave reportedly by UN command, because of a rumored "security" problem. UPDATE: The next day the UN denied they ever issued such an order, and the doctors and nurses have returned to the site.Update2: Today CNN reports the inexplicable pullout had been ordered by the head of the Belgian medical team who feared security problems.]
AC: General Honoré, what do you make of this?
Honoré: This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. That’s gotta be fixed and needs to be fixed quick. The UN command down there needs to take responsbility for this. They got 9,000 troops and if we have to, that big field, Anderson, showed we need to drop the rest of that 2nd brigrade of the 82nd Airborne down there at daylight tomorrow morning and get this problem taken care of.
It's clear that when the general talks here about "poor" people he is really talking about black people. There is racial fear here on the part of the US government, as there was in New Orleans, and so they won't move in without a humongous "security" apparatus. But Honoré correctly notes that in such a calamity, search and rescue and evacuation trumps security. You must take chances to save people's lives now.
In fact, by delaying the arrival of help, the security situation only becomes worse because people are more and more desperate. Aid should be first and foremost.
Honoré has been trying to get his message out elsewhere, such as in USAToday on Jan. 15:
Retired general: U.S. aid effort too slow
WASHINGTON — The U.S. relief effort for Haiti started too slowly and cautiously, says a retired general who led the military relief effort on the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
"The next morning after the earthquake, as a military man of 37 years service, I assumed ... there would be airplanes delivering aid, not troops, but aid," said retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who coordinated military operations after disaster struck the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005. "What we saw instead was discussion about, 'Well we've got to send an assessment team in to see what the needs are.' And anytime I hear that, my head turns red."
The problem, Honore told USA TODAY, is that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, instead of the military, take the lead in international disaster response.
AIR FORCE BUSTLES: Battling chaos at Haiti's airport
"I was a little frustrated to hear that USAID was the lead agency," he said. "I respect them, but they're not a rapid deployment unit."
USAID immediately dispatched an assessment team and search-and-rescue teams, but there has still not been widespread distribution of food or water, three days after the Haiti earthquake.
In the first two days after Tuesday evening's quake, "we saw national media in, but we didn't see Air Force airplanes taking in food and water," Honore said. Nor were military doctors on the ground treating the injured, he said.
Unfortunately, there are some who, in their desire to cover for Obama, are trying to paper over the deliberately bass-ackwards approach of the US intervention into Haiti with talk about "logistics problems." Do not forget there is a racist and imperialist history here, and it's not just history.