Blast From The Past
So I was reading a post at Steve Clemon’s Washington Note when an aside in the comments about the evacuation of US citizens from Lebanon caught my eye.
Apparently there are an estimated 25.000 US citizens stranded in the Lebanon war zone and the US government plans to evacuate them by cruise ship ‘in the next few days’, though Beirut is already in ruins from the Israeli bombing and the situation’s becoming increasingly precarious and could deteriorate at any time.
It occurs to me that they’ll need quite a few ships to ferry up to 25,000 people away from the area of conflict. The biggest available is Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas, a 142,000- ton behemoth built in 2001 that carries 3,114 passengers. Even if they had this class of vessel available, they’d need at least 8.
The Pentagon is actually sending the Orient Queen, – which 525-foot-long ship currently has a maximum capacity of 922 passengers. It’ll be accompanied by one warship. Seems like a bit of mis-match; though only 15,000 of US citizens in the country have registered with Embassy officials and many have already left by land routes, any sea transport’ll still have to make multiple trips.
Adding insult to potential injury the government also plans to charge the evacuees ‘commercial rates’ for the privilege of being rescued. This made me wonder – how much will it actually cost to escape the fighting, and what if you don’t have the money?
A 4 days/4 nightsTuesday-Saturday, cruise on the Orient Queen stopping at Port Sa?d, Limassol, Rhodes & Marmaris costs a minimum 595 euro per person ( plus taxes and port fees) or approximately 750 dollars, not exactly affordable when you’re fleeing a war zone with only 30lbs weight of personal possessions. The Pentagon says if evacuees can’t pay, they’ll work something out. Uh-huh, that’s worked really well for the Pentagon so far.
Britain at least is sending in warships, amphibious landing craft and helcopters, and we have, at a maximum, only 10,000 British citizens and dual nationals in Lebanon.
HMS Illustrious, the aircraft carrier, and HMS Bulwark, a new commando assault ship, have been sent to the Lebanese coast. They will use their helicopters and landing craft to take thousands of trapped British citizens off the beaches in Beirut if the order to evacuate is given.
Royal Marine commandos on board HMS Illustrious and HMS Bulwark are preparing to establish a landing zone. This is being billed as the ‘biggest evacuation since Dunkirk’.
One poxy, days late cruiseliner seems a little insufficient but indufficiency’s par for the course with this shower of an administration. All the while they’re making these inadequate plans to protect their own citizens they’re encourging the primary aggressor in the conflict, Israel, to carry on bombing them. Why does America hate Americans?
Hezbollah has already managed to hit an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon and the regular back and forth of one unarmed cruise ship and one lone battleship would seem to make a tempting target for anyone so inclined. I sense another Lusitania coming on. I do hope I’m wrong.
