I still haven’t made up my mind about what to think about evacuating Americans from Lebanon. I’m looking for feedback. As usual I don’t see this as a completely clearcut issue.
From a human standpoint my heart goes out to those innocents caught up in violence over which they have little if any control. That applies to American citizens, Lebanese, and Israelis, too. I wish I could evacuate everybody.
From a patriotic standpoint I think I’d acknowledge a special responsibility and concern for my fellow citizens.
From a practical standpoint I recognize that it takes time to evacuate 5,000 people from anywhere (that’s the number of requests the State Department has had: some may be duplicates). Heck, it takes time and effort to answer 5,000 phone calls. I don’t think we should have the excess capacity sitting around to handle this sort of situation anywhere in the world at the drop of a hat.
I’m not sure I share the outrage at the reports I’ve heard that those being evacuated may be charged for the service.
It’s not entirely clear to me what our responsibilities are towards people who have put themselves in a potentially dangerous situation for their own purposes.
What are the government’s responsibilities? What’s in the country’s interests?
It seems difficult to me to condemn corporate welfare on the one hand while demanding that the government indemnify business people against the risk of doing business on the other.
I think there may be a hierarchy of responsibility here. I certainly think that our first responsibility is to our civilian and military federal employees and their dependents stationed in Lebanon and I don’t think they should be charged for evacuation.
Who’s asking to be evacuated? I can see lots of subgroups including students, people conducting business, tourists, American citizens who are citizens of a third country and permanently resident there, American citizens who are also citizens of Lebanon and permanently resident there, American citizens who are permanently resident in Lebanon. Should they all be treated alike?
What do you think?
I think that the United States government has a duty to protect, to the best of its abilities and practical means, the citizens and nationals of the United States anywhere in the world under any circumstance that does not arise from their own wrongdoing. As such, the United States government has a duty to evacuate civilians (as well as, obviously, government employees) from any war zone, natural disaster area or other widespread, dangerous situation pretty much anywhere in the world, by whatever means are available and as quickly as possible.
In some cases, the government acquires a duty to evacuate non-citizen allies from a situation (such as, were we to abandon Iraq, taking the translators and other “collaborators” with us) due to actions the government has taken.
I don’t think that people the government sent to a place should be charged, and that includes dependants of those people.
I don’t care whether the government does or does not charge others for the service; I’m content to let the Congress decide that one. As they did, I seem to recall, decide when they passed the foreign aid bill that requires the government to charge for the service in many circumstances. (In other words, those people I’ve seen in a few places beating up on the President should consider: do they really want the President to just ignore the law when it’s politically convenient to do so?)
I think that’s a completely reasonable position, Jeff.
I think I might alter “as quickly as possible” to “as quickly as practical”.
As I said, I’m still thinking about this.
I think it’s a stretch to say that the Americans being evacuated from Lebanon “put themselves in a potentially dangerous situation.” Was there a preexisting State Department advisory against travel there? If so, then I can agree that charging might be warranted. Otherwise, AFAIK, Beirut wasn’t dangerous before this started, and I think most reasonable people would have agreed that it was safe to travel there.
On the other hand, if someone travels to, say, Darfur, they should know what they’re getting into.
I think that every place in the Middle East without exception is a potentially dangerous situation. It depends on your tolerance for risk. The question is to what degree should the government be in the business of mitigating risk?
Great discussion. I’ve linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2006/07/re-point-of-information.html