Please stop calling...
Is what the US embassy is said to have told Americans stranded in Lebanon in e-mails. Thousands of Americans are stranded in Lebanon. Only a lucky several hundred have made it back to the US- many are still in Cyprus.
The question is why the unbelievably imcompetent evacuation strategy, especially after a number of other countries scrambled to get their citizens out.
Was it mere incompetence?
Or, since many Americans in Lebanon are of Lebanese descent- racism?
Are the lives of Lebanese-Americans and other Americans "foolish" enough to have gone to witness the Cedar Revolution for themselves worth less than the lives of Kibbutzim on the other side of the fence? Or those in Haifa? (many of whom are also American?)
And to ask them to pay for their evacuation is very peculiar.
Is safety, then, a commodity of the rich ex-pats? Is the US government selective about whom it serves overseas?
Are "we, the people" really "some of the people" and only when convenient?
And then, ironies of ironies (yes, Dubya, more irony)- these US citizens are being bombed with bombs manufactured in their very own country, and sold to another country that bought and paid for these bombs with US aid money that comes out of the taxes of...you guessed it- US citizens!
Just like the US citizens living, visiting, and working in Lebanon.
Ooops...correction...now waiting for the US to get its act together and evacuate its citizens being bombed out of house and home by the closest ally the US has- Israel.
And yet Bush won't call for a ceasefire- not even to get his fellow Americans out of harm's way.
And Condi won't be going to Lebanon for several days more (if at all) because the US has greenlighted the bombing runs for another week.
But the problem is if Israel marches into Lebanon with a sizable ground force, she won't be going anyway, because it will be too dangerous.
But not so dangerous that the US can organize a competent evacuation.
The question is why the unbelievably imcompetent evacuation strategy, especially after a number of other countries scrambled to get their citizens out.
Was it mere incompetence?
Or, since many Americans in Lebanon are of Lebanese descent- racism?
Are the lives of Lebanese-Americans and other Americans "foolish" enough to have gone to witness the Cedar Revolution for themselves worth less than the lives of Kibbutzim on the other side of the fence? Or those in Haifa? (many of whom are also American?)
And to ask them to pay for their evacuation is very peculiar.
Is safety, then, a commodity of the rich ex-pats? Is the US government selective about whom it serves overseas?
Are "we, the people" really "some of the people" and only when convenient?
And then, ironies of ironies (yes, Dubya, more irony)- these US citizens are being bombed with bombs manufactured in their very own country, and sold to another country that bought and paid for these bombs with US aid money that comes out of the taxes of...you guessed it- US citizens!
Just like the US citizens living, visiting, and working in Lebanon.
Ooops...correction...now waiting for the US to get its act together and evacuate its citizens being bombed out of house and home by the closest ally the US has- Israel.
And yet Bush won't call for a ceasefire- not even to get his fellow Americans out of harm's way.
And Condi won't be going to Lebanon for several days more (if at all) because the US has greenlighted the bombing runs for another week.
But the problem is if Israel marches into Lebanon with a sizable ground force, she won't be going anyway, because it will be too dangerous.
But not so dangerous that the US can organize a competent evacuation.
