Cdt Matteo
Active member
If this would have been treated like a military situation (ie send Combat Engineers, establish forward base, etc), it could have been under control a lot sooner.
If this would have been treated like a military situation (ie send Combat Engineers, establish forward base, etc), it could have been under control a lot sooner.
If this would have been treated like a military situation (ie send Combat Engineers, establish forward base, etc), it could have been under control a lot sooner.
ROME -- Italy's top disaster official called the Haiti quake-relief effort a "pathetic" failure Sunday, criticizing the militarized approach of the U.S. as ineffective and out of touch for the emergency at hand.
Guido Bertolaso, Italy's well-respected civil protection chief, said what was needed was a single international civilian coordinator to take charge, and for individual countries and aid agencies to stop flying their flags and posing for TV cameras and get to work.
"Unfortunately there's this need to make a 'bella figura' before the TV cameras rather than focus on what's under the debris," said Bertolaso, who won praise for his handling of Italy's 2009 quake in Abruzzo.
In particular, he criticized what he called the well-meaning but ineffective U.S.-run military operation. The U.S. military has more than 2,000 troops on the ground, helping to deliver humanitarian aid.....
Citing the botched U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina, he said the Americans "tend to confuse military with what should be an emergency intervention that cannot be given over solely to the armed forces. We're missing a leader, a coordination capacity that goes beyond military discipline." "It's a truly powerful show of force, but it's completely out of touch with reality," Bertolaso said. "They don't have close rapport with the territory, they certainly don't have a rapport with the international organizations and aid groups," leading everyone do their own thing without any coordination.....
While many have lamented the slow pace of the relief effort, Bertolaso joined several allied leftist Latin American presidents — Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega — in voicing such criticism of the U.S. military effort
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro also wrote an op-ed piece saying the U.S. military presence was hindering international cooperation and accusing Washington of sending troops "to occupy Haitian territory."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8479494.stmSome isolated scenes of looting and the sound of occasional gunfire reinforced the view of security advisers that the streets of Port-au-Prince were a war zone, and it found itself re-categorised into the same bracket of cities that included Baghdad and Kabul. That kept many aid workers firmly behind the safety fence at the UN compound.
Another problem came in the sheer scale of the US military deployment.
An aid official from a major and reputable international organisation told me last week that when he had tried to secure landing rights for a relief flight from Europe, he was told by the US authorities that the next available landing slot "was on 9 February". The airstrip is filled instead with US transport planes bringing in troops and military equipment. The problem is that this bottleneck means that the threat of worsening security could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they do not deliver the aid fast, they will need all those troops.But because of the enormous need and failures elsewhere in the system they need to spend far more time negotiating security issues than they otherwise might.
The third major issue in Haiti was in the lack of coordination of aid. One reason for this was the huge loss of life in the UN system - 200 dead, including the head of mission. But there was similar dislocation to the staff of aid agencies in Aceh, and there the system recovered far more quickly, so that a new co-ordination network could deliver aid across a far wider area than was affected in Haiti.
The biggest difference between the two countries was their starting point. Indonesia is a rapidly developing nation, while Haiti is the only country in the western hemisphere on that unenviable UN list of those defined as Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Corruption and the legacy of colonial interference have conspired against good governance. At the best of times, water and power are unreliable, and the streets are filled with rotting refuse.
Basically there is not enough infrastructure to have aid come in sufficiently.
There just isn't a whole lot you can do about that.
As for saying that military presence is not necessary, those guys are idiots. They don't realize that having the US military in country reduces the liklihood of attacks against foreign aid workers. I agree, it may not be a very military scenario right now but it can be a week from now when criminal elements in the country realize there's more food and medicine in the country than ever before and no force protecting it. Then it becomes a LOT harder to deploy troops and lives will be lost as a consequence.
As for saying that military presence is not necessary, those guys are idiots.
In addition to some members using Katrina as an example of poor response and management, may I also remind them certain laws and requirements must be met before the deployment of anything short of a Boy Scout troop on US soil.
Blanco hadn't even bothered to put the National Guard of alert, didn't give the "OK" for Federalized troops to enter Louisiana until after the fact, neighboring states waited for the "OK" to send in their National Guard units, FEMA had just finished adapting and shifting all it's doctrine and training to address largely terrorist threats so rather than having the facilitation to adapt to the situation most FEMA/EM personnel are sitting around with IC books and plan charts designed for a major terrorist threat, and there was no cooperation between FEMA, the State government or the states EMO. So I am lacking to see where Bush fits into any of this.
Still have that little problem that the Law says the Feds have to be asked, yeah they could have/should have been ready to go when asked, but they still have to be asked.Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. George W Bush was President since 2001.
There's no excuse.
If the toilets in a hospital are a mess, the President of the hospital is responsible. The fact that he doesn't go cleaning toilets himself is irrelevant.
The uncoordinated nature of all these different branches is ultimately the President's responsibility.
I'd say if all these agencies can't work together, I'd have them reorganized under one leadership and one agency.
I missed that bit, where did they say that? they just don't don't think an 'invasion force', hogging the entire airport capacity is appropriate
You'd think that the Federal agencies could have been ready to mobilize when Katrina hit. If the state is late to call, I'd think that the President of the United States of all people could give the governer a phone call to remind him (read: tear the governer a new assh0le for not being prepared).
Explain the difference.
And what about a military deployment to maintain order and to provide security to aid material and personnel hogging the entire airport capacity because it's such a small POS?
As for saying that military presence is not necessary, those guys are idiots.
Not according to Perseus. He thinks the US is preventing democracy by sending a occupying force. The US is taking over Haiti for it's oil.:lol:
There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil had dried up. This is detailed by Dr. Georges Michel in an article dated March 27, 2004 outlining the history of oil explorations and oil reserves in Haiti and in the research of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin.
There is also good evidence that these very same big US oil companies and their inter-related monopolies of engineering and defense contractors made plans, decades ago, to use Haiti's deep water ports either for oil refineries or to develop oil tank farm sites or depots where crude oil could be stored and later transferred to small tankers to serve U.S. and Caribbean ports. This is detailed in a paperabout the Dunn Plantation at Fort Liberte in Haiti.
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