INGRATES!
Posted on 07/21/2006 3:15:31 PM PDT by GMMAC
Whiners: Find your own way out of Beirut
After being rescued from war zone, a little gratitude would be nice
The Edmonton Journal
Fri 21 Jul 2006
Page: A18
Section: Opinion
Byline: Lorne Gunter
Aw, the boat ride was too long, was it? And you say it was too hot? There was no doctor on board, either? And the departure was delayed. And the port was chaotic. And too little food and water had been laid in. And some of you had to sleep on the floor!?
Oh, the indignity of it.
To listen to the whining and carping of many of the 261 Canadians rescued from Beirut on the first day of the evacuation from Lebanon, you would think they had just been returned to port from an ocean cruise that went terribly wrong, instead of being saved from a war zone.
Tuesday, the Crown Princess, a Princess Cruises ship, suddenly listed to port in heavy seas off the coast of Florida. The promenade deck almost submerged. Stairwells "became waterfalls." The casino and gift shop below decks were flooded. The main dining room had to be turned into a triage ward as more than 200 of the 3,100 passengers on board were injured by the sudden tilt; 94 had to be taken off for hospitals on shore.
By contrast, no passengers on the first Canadian rescue ship were injured. The worst that happened was a few threw up.
And, yet, the grousing and moaning on the Crown Princess did not equal that of the evacuees from Lebanon when they reached Cyprus early Thursday morning. Some even cursed at the Canadian diplomats who greeted them.
One woman from Montreal described the trip as "hell;" not the war, but rather her tax-paid voyage to freedom. After all, it had taken 15 hours instead of seven. Twice their ship, the Blue Dawn, had been stopped by the Israeli navy to ensure it was not hostile.
Imagine that. Stopping a ship in a war zone to see whether it is friend or foe. How rude!
And the griping doesn't end with those Ottawa has already plucked from the suddenly very hot zone in south Lebanon. Others still awaiting evacuation complain that our embassy in Beirut has not dealt with them fast enough. Their e-mails have gone unanswered, their phone calls meet with a busy signal. If they present themselves in person, there are long lines in the hot sun to meet a Foreign Affairs official face-to-face.
There aren't hotel rooms for them all. The waiting rooms are inadequate for the numbers wanting to leave. Embassy staff will not give precise departure times.
No kidding. We're not talking about the returns desk at Wal-Mart the day after Christmas.
A staff of two dozen, who normally deal with a few thousand inquiries a year are suddenly swamped with 2,000 or 3,000 people demanding to be saved - Now! In a city that no longer has a functioning airport. Where fighter-bombers frequently scream overhead. Air raids do tend to disrupt the flow of things.
It's a wonder our government managed, at all, to find seven underused cruise ships it could lease on such short notice.
On the first day that any country was able to get its citizens out by boat, we managed to rescue 261. The British got out just 170 of their people. The French, who have a fleet of warships patrolling the Mediterranean, could manage just 180.
Thursday, we rescued another 1,375. And thereafter, we should be able to extract 700 to 1,000 swearing, muttering ingrates each day, either to Cyprus or Turkey.
But just wait until they get to safe ports and find out they have several-day waits ahead of them until they can be airlifted - again at taxpayers' expense - to Canada.
When told she might have to sit put in Cyprus for a few days until a jet ride could be arranged, and that while she waited she would have to find and pay for her own hotel and meals, one of the first evacuees complained that the government had not already taken care of such things.
Whatever happened to personal responsibility? To simple gratefulness?
I don't expect the rescued Canadians to bow down and kiss the feet of our diplomats when they arrive on safe soil. But why is it too much to expect they might be thankful simply for being extracted from a danger zone, regardless of how uncomfortably?
They remind me of the Canadian and British antiwar activists extracted by commandos earlier this year from months of captivity in Iraq, who rather than saying thank you criticized the rescuers for using force to free them.
Wouldn't you be grateful to be rescued from Lebanon right now even if you and your family had to ride out in the fish hold of a trawler for a few days?
And yes it does matter that many of those complaining are Canadians of convenience. They hold Canadian passports, but have dual citizenship in Lebanon and have not been much interested in Canada for years until their real home country started getting dangerous.
There is a simple solution to this carping. The boats have to go back to Beirut for more evacuees. Anyone who profanes a Canadian worker or whines about conditions on the free boat gets put back on board and returned to Lebanon where they can find their own way out.
Your xenophobic and racist rant has outed you as a loon. Congratulations!
Oops, you are so RIGHT... I should have responded to Peach. You travel when and where you wish. And, it isn't the "cost" necessary to return the whiners home, it's the ATTITUDE AND ACCUSATIONS TOWARD THE U.S. GOVERNMENT (which means me and all citizens of the best country on earth) that bugs the hell out of me! And, as for "business trips" I'm referring to the ones that go over them and exploit the area to make tons of money (don't say that isn't true, I know people who have) and now are whining because we didn't freakin' rescue them within one hour, just like the "Katrina victims." You know what I'm talking about, and the "dual citizens" that avoid paying taxes here... But now want our taxes to pay for the safe return and even then, whine because it wasn't fast enough. Please don't make me go on...
Oops, you caught me!!! Now what?
Bravo!
It's about time for an ambitious soul to go through Ann's books and columns and pull out "The Quotable Ann Coulter." I mean, if people can read "Quotations of Chairman Mao" -- which were as turgid as used motor oil -- they will dance in the streets after reading Annie.
In Free Republic, we like to maintain a clear distinction between intellectual admiration and raw lust.
It's amazing to me too, wlandsodidwe.
The day I don't support a freeper in a war zone is the day I quit Free Republic.
INGRATES!
You do understand that the reason we had an atom bomb is that we got Germany's scientists after Germany surrendered, that we were still at war with Japan for a year after Germany surrendeed? We didn't have the bomb ready until 1945.
Thanks. Leave it to me to be "close" but not quite right when it comes to history. The point that I was trying to make upthread was that it wasn't a given that we would be on the winning side in WWII.
Well said. And I generally feel that way about any American in that situation. Evacuating American civilians is the morally and ethically correct thing to do when possible. The State Department and DOD did a magnificent job planning and executing a large-scale evacuation program in a reasonable amount of time with no casualties.
However, Americans traveling abroad should understand that evacuation is not a "right" or an "entitlement", and there are no guarantees that evacuations can always be carried out.
OK. Let's spend a week touring Baghdad.
I watched local (DC) coverage of the arriving evacuees at Thurgood Marshall (nee BWI) airport. Maybe I'm a racist or xenophobe, but it seemed the Euro-Americans were grateful to be home and noted appreciation of efforts made on their behalf. On the other hand .... those who appeared of Middle Eastern extraction couldn't condemn our government enough given the photo op.
I have become chauvinistic enough now to say the US has to stop this dual citizenship crap. They can become Americans like our ancestors did, renouncing allegiance to any other nation, or they can stay in that other country. We just cannot afford for them to have it both ways.
same with the "Brits"
The idea of identity is now one way, but saying so makes you "racist".
"same with the 'Brits'" ... and Canadians as I read on another thread.
Something uniquely wimpy (as opposed to WASPy) about white anglo-saxons these days. Guilt, I guess, for having been so powerful for so long, for their advances in society, the sconomy, science, medicine, trade, etc. I'm beginning to think the last of the tough, manly-man Anglo-Saxon-Celts are in Australia.
Read your page ... what an exciting life you've led !!!
Hope you stay safe in Indonesia ... it's about as "iffy" a place now as exists.
"and Canadians as I read on another thread. "
oops, that was THIS thread. sorry. I'm so easily confused ;)
Australia will be last refuge of the "white-man."
There is no doubt.
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