I posted yesterday about the evacuation beginning in Lebanon. Austin Bay sets me straight on the complexities of putting together something of this nature, size and speed.
Four days to assemble an evacuation fleet and move it into a war zone is rapid action. It does not appear that way with 24/7 news which relies on a constant stream of sensational headlines. Carping on a microphone is easy. Providing perspective is more difficult. Remember, the Navy is conducting combat operations as well as training operations.
This Reuters factbox provides data on the number of foreign nationals in Lebanon.
According to Reuters: “More than 2,400 Americans are to be evacuated by air and sea on Wednesday out of a total of 8,000 to be brought out.” The UN has hired a Cypriot ferry to pull out family members and some non-essential staff. France has received 8000 evacuation requests. Australia 7500. Britain has a naval task force in the area and expects to pull out 5000 people.
I’ll repeat a point from the earlier post: Evacuees are usually frightened or angry or both. That’s understandable, but emotional volatility adds another layer of difficulty the mission. Most evacuees do not have an appreciation of basic military procedures, much less an understanding of how complicated one helicopter lift mission can be (in terms of planning, logistics, politics, and then there’s the weather…)
I have always said, if we were ever evac'ed out of Chiner, I would wait for the Marines, because they would get me out in one piece. The complaints of evacuations from Jakarta stemmed from private companies handling the evacuations of nationals...and it was hap-hazard. And those companies get PAID to do those sort of things.
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