Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid cosigned a letter expressing anger at the US's glacial pace at evacuating citizens from Beirut. "This is being treated like a mini-Katrina," he commented in the Washington Times. The Marines landed in Beirut today to help evacuate US citizens, some of whom spent the day sipping free cocktails on the deck of the rented luxury liner Orient Queen.
The comparison is striking. Yes, several thousand US citizens, including two of my dearest friends, are trapped in hotels, dorms and apartments around Beirut as I write this. It's a terrifying situation for them, particularly if the US decides to force them to pay thousands of dollars for their transport, and my sympathies are certainly with them. Reid compares their position to Hurricane Katrina, when many more thousands of US citizens were left to die on their rooftops as the fetid floodwaters rose. There is a Katrina comparison to be made here, but it's not about stranded Americans this time. A more apt comparison would be the Katrina-like displacement of over half a million Lebanese now taking place.
With roadways destroyed, and Israel's planes bombing milk bottling plants and medical convoys, Lebanon's already weak and inept government relief effort would be a joke, if there were any humor to be found in the situation. Beirutis are crowding into makeshift shelters in schools and parks, and attempting to stretch what food and water supplies they have, since no food and water is forthcoming from the government. Volunteers (including my stranded friends) and Lebanese left-wing organizations are working frantically to raise money and deliver supplies to the ordinary people who have suddenly become refugees. (For more information, or to donate to their relief effort, click here.) The groups' requests are telling: they are asking for sanitary supplies and anti-diarrheal medicines, as Israel's indiscriminate bombings turn polished, metropolitan Beirut back into the war zone of two decades ago. Like Londoners during the Blitz, Lebanese families are taking one another in and remaining in resolutely high spirits. But the world is watching, quietly and unapologetically, as Israel responds to the kidnapping of two soldiers by obliterating a city of millions. Will they step in and make an attempt to stop the assault? Will dispossessed Beirutis, like their brothers and sisters in New Orleans, be forgotten and left to fend for themselves?
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