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l33tminion) wrote2010-01-18 08:13 pm
l33tminion) wrote2010-01-18 08:13 pm
Why Does the US Lack a Humanitarian Strike Team?
Greg Palast published an article blasting the US Government for their slow response to the disaster in Haiti:
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters...
But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water. [emphasis his]
Iceland has their humanitarian forces deployed within the day, China within 48 hours. The US is much slower to respond, though we have military bases very close by. We have a military that can get bombs and missiles to any part of the world on very short notice, but when it comes to dispatching humanitarian aid, we're slow. Why can't we match Iceland? Why don't we have a humanitarian strike team capable of supplying and defending themselves, ready to go anywhere in the world and facilitate disaster response on a moment's notice? Why do we spend so much money and so many soldiers' lives to kill terrorists, when terrorism is a relatively small threat to global security? And when it comes to terrorism, why do we neglect the most basic method: Make fewer people hate us, and of the people who hate us, make fewer hate us intensely?
Part of this is standing US policy that Haiti cannot succeed, even if we have to personally prevent them from having a semblance of democracy. But it's not just Haiti. Rather, conservative* opposition to liberal pacifism has led them to romanticize war to such a degree that they oppose, on principle, nonviolent approaches to security. That belief is backed by rationalizations. In Haiti, there is the (so far completely unsubstantiated) assumption that desperate Haitians are likely to turn to violence en masse. In the War on Terror, I've heard conservatives more explicitly state that "those people only understand violence". And those rationalizations are often so strongly overstated that they rule out not only non-violent solutions, but any solution that isn't ill-considered, indiscriminate violence. That's why the US lacks a humanitarian strike team with effectiveness equivalent to Iceland's. Only a liberal could think such a team would be an effective way of protecting US (or even global) security in the grim darkness of our apocalyptic present.
* Yes, the Democrats are in charge now, but US military and national security policy are very deeply conservative. In part, this is because the conservatives were in charge during 9/11 and the start of the War on Terror, which is why you see, for example, Gates being kept on as Secretary of Defense. More importantly, it's because of right-wing control of the media, liberals have very bad PR on security in particular.
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters...
But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water. [emphasis his]
Iceland has their humanitarian forces deployed within the day, China within 48 hours. The US is much slower to respond, though we have military bases very close by. We have a military that can get bombs and missiles to any part of the world on very short notice, but when it comes to dispatching humanitarian aid, we're slow. Why can't we match Iceland? Why don't we have a humanitarian strike team capable of supplying and defending themselves, ready to go anywhere in the world and facilitate disaster response on a moment's notice? Why do we spend so much money and so many soldiers' lives to kill terrorists, when terrorism is a relatively small threat to global security? And when it comes to terrorism, why do we neglect the most basic method: Make fewer people hate us, and of the people who hate us, make fewer hate us intensely?
Part of this is standing US policy that Haiti cannot succeed, even if we have to personally prevent them from having a semblance of democracy. But it's not just Haiti. Rather, conservative* opposition to liberal pacifism has led them to romanticize war to such a degree that they oppose, on principle, nonviolent approaches to security. That belief is backed by rationalizations. In Haiti, there is the (so far completely unsubstantiated) assumption that desperate Haitians are likely to turn to violence en masse. In the War on Terror, I've heard conservatives more explicitly state that "those people only understand violence". And those rationalizations are often so strongly overstated that they rule out not only non-violent solutions, but any solution that isn't ill-considered, indiscriminate violence. That's why the US lacks a humanitarian strike team with effectiveness equivalent to Iceland's. Only a liberal could think such a team would be an effective way of protecting US (or even global) security in the grim darkness of our apocalyptic present.
* Yes, the Democrats are in charge now, but US military and national security policy are very deeply conservative. In part, this is because the conservatives were in charge during 9/11 and the start of the War on Terror, which is why you see, for example, Gates being kept on as Secretary of Defense. More importantly, it's because of right-wing control of the media, liberals have very bad PR on security in particular.
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