By now you’ve probably already seen the dramatic footage (Michelle Malkin has photos) of Americans wading on to landing craft. Wartime evacuations are always difficult but this one is ramping up rapidly:
In addition to the USS Nashville, the Saudi-owned, Panamanian-flagged Rahmah, with a capacity of 1,400 passengers, arrived in the region and will begin ferrying U.S. citizens to Cyprus tomorrow. The Italian ship Vittoria, with a capacity of around 330 passengers, also will begin operations in the next few days.DoD officials said five more U.S. Navy ships will arrive at the scene in the next few days. The USS Iwo Jima will join the operation July 22. Officials expect to move around 4,000 evacuees tomorrow.
Some 300 to 500 Americans are caught in fighting between the terrorist group Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon, DoD officials said. Hezbollah continues to fire missiles into northern Israel, and Israelis are replying with artillery and air strikes.
“Things are, in fact, quite volatile out of southern Lebanon right now. We do have several groups of people … that have congregated and are ready to move,” Mara Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, said yesterday. “We would like to be able to move them through the country, up north, and put them on ships and get them out of harm’s way.
Critics aren’t going to have much success spinning this into some kind of Katrina-like failure. Canada, Australia, and other nations are facing the same difficulties, frustrations, and delays.
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Yes, there has been some whining about the evacuation being too slow. Of course in the age of instant gradification, if it takes longer than a text message, it’s too slow.
Let’s face it. The US isn’t all that good at evacuations. It’s just not part of our national ethos. We are largely of pioneer stock and once we occupy land we are loath to give it up whether in the face of a hurricane or a war. Being a forward looking, aggressive, and violent when provoked people, we are much, much better at invasions. It might be a good idea to contract out our evacuations to the French.