By Korea is currently debating whether or not to send troops to Haiti to increase the UN presence in the country:
The government yesterday said it was considering sending forces to Haiti on the request of the United Nations to help secure the island in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.
There is currently some 9,000 multinational troops and police enforcement in Haiti including one Korean major.
The Foreign Ministry said the government is mulling over sending more troops to take part in peacekeeping operations on the quake-stricken island to make a “bigger contribution” to international efforts to stabilize Haiti.
The Foreign Ministry will be discussing the issue with the Defense Ministry.
The dispatch, unlike sending troops to a war or conflict area such as Afghanistan, does not require a National Assembly approval. [Korea Herald]
Korea will probably end up making a large troop contribution since it is fellow South Korean UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon making the request to enlarge the peacekeeping force in Haiti.
While the UN is trying to enlarge their presence in Haiti the US is currently being criticized for its response to the disaster and of course the French is leading the way:
It says something about the United States’ reputation for being able to do things on a massive scale that the dispossessed Haitians and the overwhelmed relief workers already on the island seemed disappointed and angry that the U.S. had not arrived immediately and set things right.
Almost a week after the catastrophic earthquake, however, the U.S. had 12,000 members of its armed services on the ground or immediately offshore, with more ships and helicopters on the way.
The earthquake made a shambles out of the Haitian government, barely functional in the best of times, and decapitated the local U.N. office, the principal international humanitarian organization in Haiti.
The U.S., for lack of any alternatives, stepped into the leadership vacuum. The Haitian government turned over control of the Port-au-Prince airport, whose tower and terminal had been destroyed, to the American military.
The crush of arriving relief aircraft and chaos on the ground forced the airport to close to incoming traffic. U.S. military air-traffic controllers soon sorted out the mess, but not without bruised feelings.
A French government minister complained that the controllers had turned away a French relief flight. Indeed, the flight was rerouted to the neighboring Dominican Republic, resulting in a 24-hour delay in the arrival of a mobile hospital. But the alternative was to risk a runway collision that would have closed the only truly functional access to the capital.
The same French minister, Alain Joyandet, according to the Associated Press, is urging the United Nations “to investigate the dominant U.S. role in the relief operation, claiming that the international aid efforts were supposed to be about helping Haiti, not `occupying’ it.” [Korea Times]
Here is where it is good to have Barack Obama as our President because could you imagine the vitriol that would be said if George Bush was still the President and this earthquake happened?
Anyway I think it is pretty clear that the US government is doing everything it can to help the Haitians and the only organization with the ability to meet the immediate aid relief needs of Haiti is the US military. Think about it, the UN had thousands of soldiers on the ground and could not organize an immediate aid response. It was only when American soldiers got there that an aid response was organized.
This is eerily similar to the Hurricane Katrina disaster where it wasn’t until the US military arrived that order was restored and aid able to flow in to help the survivors. This is why I have always believed that the US military should organize a disaster relief brigade with personnel specially trained to respond to disaster like this. Response times and the flowing of aid would likely be quicker thus saving more lives, but of course the usual suspects would still complain about the US military.
3:40 am on January 19th, 2010 1
As anyone in the US military who has dealt with UN troops knows, deployed UN troops are nothing more than a jobs program for Third World governments who can't afford to pay their troops and/or don't trust having their troops hanging around (i.e., coup prevention).
And as most job programs go, you get what you pay for.
7:12 am on January 19th, 2010 2
The U.S. shouldn't have to do this alone. This kind of thing is what the UN should be doing if it were more effective. At least NATO should be able to co-ordinate easily to form a response team. Europe (minus England) needs to step up more in the international community instead of being needed to be dragged into helping.
8:36 am on January 19th, 2010 3
Our emergency system is fine. At the fed level, when FEMA is adequately resourced and experts are in put charge, it can perform superbly. Plus, states and municipalities have plenty of expert emergency crew members who know their regions and specific crafts very well. This is why locals should have great deal of authority.
As for Katrina, the problem was that the emergency response ability was degraded even at the White House level. Appointing inexperienced Mike Brown as head of FEMA was a consequential mistake–and will justly leave a bad mark on Bush's career. You say that the US military should have been the main organizer of the relief effort. However, their involvement may not have improved response post-Katrina. This is because secdef Rumsfeld believes that the US military should take no part in domestic disaster areas. Part of his notion of the proper role of gov is that domestic natural disasters should be dealt with at the state and local levels. Rumsfeld went out of his way to make it as difficult as possible to move in troops in the first place. Rumsfeld's callous incompetence in both Iraq and Katrina ensured that the DoD was not as quick with responses to changing situations under his leadership as it should have been. But Rumsefeld's appointment is just another consequential mistake Bush made.
The French gripe here is silly. All news outlets mention that the seaport is gone and that the airport with the one short runway and small apron is the only way in for large transports. The US military took over the airport with the blessing of the Haitian leadership who overruled the objections of their own local air traffic authority. If Haitians have anything in common with Koreans it is that both peoples (understandably) are very sensitive about how they are perceived by the outside world and whether their national dignity is being besmirched. The Haitians say that they have allowed the Americans to take over the airport because they have the skills and equipment to do so. However, the Haitian ambassador to the US is keen on making the point that the Americans are not in charge of the country.
The French need to adjust their expectations of what the remaining infrastracture at the Port can handle. They need to be supportive of the people–the US military in this case–who are working as hard as they can to relieve the traffic conjestion at the airport. And after this remark, they need to make a public statement in support of the American effort because such remarks can lead to undeserved and unnecessary bad feelings, which may hinder relief efforts and relationships moving forward. It would be truly unjust should anyone use the remark to fuel anti-american sentiment.
8:49 am on January 19th, 2010 4
Since the US still can't get New Orleans in order, I think it would be wrong to look to it as a big source of help.
9:08 am on January 19th, 2010 5
Blaming the UN here is silly. Despite outcries by human-rights groups against it, MINUSTAH probably is a force for good in the country. Unfortunately, the earthquake claimed somewhere between 150-200 UN personnel, including large chunks in the chain of command, including their top two.
Also, because Haitians are the descendants of French slaves, their relationship with France in particular is not a happy one. This is why, MINUSTAH is largely a Brazilian-led effort with massive contributions from South America, Asia, and Africa.
Also, the US never does the organization of massive relief efforts alone.
9:15 am on January 19th, 2010 6
What happened in New Orleans is the government's fault, not the military. The myriad of red tape and regulation makes it difficult to build even a single house. Not to mention the mostly unfit local government that can't seem to anything.
Haiti is third world country in chaos, so some of the rules are probably out of the window. No fiddling over insurance, paper works and permits for building houses, signing executive orders, etc.
Of course, If Haitians were concerned about American failures in New Orleans and asked Obama to stay away (an impossible and unforesseable scenario), we should respect that. But then the UN will be left in charge, and I trust that organization less than my own government.
10:54 am on January 19th, 2010 7
The press made sure that FEMA and G W Bush became the whipping boy for the dreadful performance of mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin and the governor of Louisiana. New Orleans is still a third world type city, just as it was before Katrina.
I don't know why the US always helps other countries just to get shyte on.
11:08 am on January 19th, 2010 8
For those of us in the US military who have actually had to work with deployed UN troops, it is well known that these UN forces are usually nothing more than a jobs program for Third World governments who can't afford to pay their troops and/or don't trust having their unpaid troops hanging around in their own country (ie, coup prevention).
As with any publicly funded jobs program, quantity not quality is the measure of effectiveness, and you get what you pay for.
11:27 am on January 19th, 2010 9
What everyone seems to forget is that Haiti was a bottomless foreign aid black hole…
…and economic/political/environmental/cultural/social basket case BEFORE the earthquake.
Even with a large UN office and lots of aid agencies, nothing could really be done to improve it before… and less should be expected to be done with it now.
Even if the US built a gleaming new city and gave everyone ten thousand dollars in cash… in ten years it would look like, well, Haiti.
As for now, a few tens of thousands of troops managing millions of displaced Haitians is like herding cats…
…big, angry, hungry cats armed with machetes and an overpowering urge to blame everyone else for their problems.
Jax,
You speak the truth! Well said.
1:45 pm on January 19th, 2010 10
But the French plane had Champaign as its cargo, that should have counted for something.
2:01 pm on January 19th, 2010 11
Lots of behind-the-scenes crud going on that I have a real bad gut feeling over.
The premier rescue team in the US is the FEMA team who go in on the first alert. Word is that they suited up and got ready to deploy at first word of Haiti's disaster BUT no orders ever came down and they are still sitting at home. FEMA IS NOT GOING TO DEPLOY!!!
Also hearing word that Haitians are being flown to the US and housed "temporarily" in churches but being given paperwork to apply for "temporary-permanent work visa" status. This opens the doors to all the already present illegal Haitians to also apply.
BUT at the same time, the US Navy is swinging into action to prevent any mass boat exodus from Haiti to the US. Obama wants to expand on the immigration "open border" and give the illegal aliens their rightful vote in US elections in 2010, but at the same time look like he's protecting American shores. The big picture is the Haitian issue has played right into the hands of Obama's agenda. This disturbs me that human tragedy can be played to a political advantage.
Bill Clinton, bless his heart, loves the attention. First it distracts from the news media attention of his mistress while Hillary was campaigning — and second, this has been a blessing for getting more millions for his non-profit organization. George Bush? GW is just along for the ride as a humanitarian as far as I can see no ulterior motive so far. Right now only Clinton is out shedding his crocodile tears to the press and playing the public servant role as one of the best communicators in the world.
But what I see is the US playing this as a power play — with all the nations trying to be the "big power" on the scene. French? Korean? Israeli? US? Who got control of the capital building first? You send in a security patrol, I send in a Marine Brigade. You send rescue teams…I send a carrier. You send medical teams…I send the 82d Airborne. Big time power moves. Even the UN is trying to be the head of the operations, but Ban is just too weak politically. What I see is human tragedy being subjugated to the power politics in the world.
Latest estimates are 200,000 killed (unsubstantiated) and the horror is just too vast to comprehend. Yet, all I see is the charities moving in in force to get their "cut" of the pie. Call 90999 to donate — and how much percentage goes to the administrators? Even hip-hop stars are starting charities? Bleeding hearts are shelling out big time — and unscrupulous operators (as happens on EVERY tragedy) have swung into action.
This is what disturbs me about the present Haitian situation. The people's misery is being played for personal/national gain.
6:43 pm on January 19th, 2010 12
they got their panties in a buch cuz their just mad about iraq.
the relief efforts have nothing to do with power play, and only because the UN feels incompetent again. of course, it was a good move by the US to go in with a show of force =)
5:58 am on January 20th, 2010 13
I understand where your fears are coming from, but I would like to assure your fears are not wellfounded.
(1) FEMA is a domestic agency serving the US and its territories. Haiti is a sovereign state. Thus, the premier US organization in the rescue effort is USAID. They are on the job.
(2) The US military gets involved in very few relief efforts at the level that you see here in Haiti. As in the Asian tsunami relief effort before it, the US military is called in especially in places where security and civil infrastracture become completely obliterated.
(i) The US military is on the job here because Haiti is notoriously a dangerous place. For instance, it should be noted that with the destruction of the local prisons, many criminals have fled captivity. Interestingly, the disaster has brought a strange peace to Haiti. But there are small pockets of restlessness, and you can easily find news footage of bands of young men wielding machetes roaming some neighborhoods. It does seem that the US military is acting as personal security for each municipal emergency crew arriving from all over the world. It should be noted that the US is following a long established and successful protocol in how they are working in Haiti. Which is to say that every president would have done what Obama is doing now.
(3) Haiti is right next to the US, so the US is in the best position to supply the leadership that is most certainly missing in Haiti. Haiti was hit in its capital. The result is that its political and security chain of command suffered major casualties. Not only that, but NGOs, charities, and world bodies have also sustained major casualties, including the UN, whose leadership is visibly absent in Haiti. This is because their Haiti branch headquarters are also located in the capital. But as soon as the UN World Food Programme and UNOCHA gather their teams and arrive, they will take over leadership duties from the US military. Specifically, in regards to the control over the airport, I think it is the World Food Programme, which should be taking over.
(4) I am certain that the DoD would rather make a show of force in Afganistan than in Haiti. sending 11,000 men into Haiti means taking away resources from elsewhere. On the contrary, there is no strategic gain in making a show of force in Haiti. The US military has a long tradition of engaging in relief efforts. And they naturally have many experts in the field of relief work, including aspects other than providing security–they have medical doctors, chaplains, civil engineers, air traffic controllers, mechanics, large vehicle drivers, logistics experts, etc. These are the very good reasons GI Korea is advocating that the US military should take over American disaster relief.
(5) The reason why we have a carrier in Haiti is because Haiti lost its seaport and its airport has one short runway and a small apron. Meaning, that there is a major bottleneck at the city's point of entry. Helicopters based off the carrier was essential early in the relief effort in bringing in troops, airdopping supplies, and providing recon.
(6) I want to point out that it is pretty messed up for Americans to think that American presidents are evil because they want to provide disaster relief. The American president who does nothing is the one you should be worried about. Your criticising Clinton, Bush, and Obama is really messed up. Whatever you think about the US-led coup attempts, I acknowledge that American presidents are naturally interested in bringing a sustainable end to Haiti's suffering. Clinton also happens to be the world's point man for relief efforts in Haiti before the earthquake. He has been working with various world body organizations to reforest the bare landscape, improve security in the country and attract foreign direct investments to create jobs.
9:40 am on January 20th, 2010 14
Regarding the performance of the 82nd:
An NPR reporter today on the News Hour gave tremendous praise to the 82nd for their performance. He was happily amazed how they are able to move food and water rations to about 50 Haitians per minute at their distribution site. He also marvelled at how the Sea Stallions ferrying supplies were well coordinated in speedily unloading their cargo and taking off to make room for the next transport.
2:55 pm on January 20th, 2010 15
Just to tag on:
1. The US is the only nation with the capacity to bring in that ammount of aid that quickly. A US carrier or Amphib is a floating city and when not at War can quickly push more supplies than everything the UN and French are pushing combined. They are supplying needed water bottles we are supplying 5,000 gallon tankers, it is all in the scale.
2. In a disaster of this magnitude you must establish security early. The roads must be cleared to get in and help people. The remaining infrastructure must be protected or you will need to replace it as well and the weakened population must be protected. Those that decry the "heavy hand" of the US would be the first to criticize the US for not protecting their emergency teams. I saw two contrasting news scenes, one with an angry crowd taking everything they could from exasperated blue hats leaving many without anything. The second was an 82nd site with people waiting patiently in line to receive a measured ration. You pick.
3:53 pm on January 20th, 2010 16
Agreed. A large contingent of US military personnel is indeed like a highly mobile small city in which every single resident has one or more skills directly useful in disaster relief work of this magnitude. And included in the military presence in Haiti right now is the USNS Comfort, a humongous high-tech floating hospital, which arrived earlier today.
The NPR reporter I mention below basically was saying that the 82nd's supply distribution site was by far the best organized and most efficient of all the distribution site in the city.
6:49 pm on January 20th, 2010 17
Considering we spend north of half a trillion dollars a year on the military the least we can expect from them is to be able to effectively hand out water and dig latrines for starving Haitians (if they're not able to secure Iraq against teenage irregulars and paramilitary sources or bring in Osama). This is what we pay and train millions of lower-income Americans for.. stuff that the rest of us dont want to do. Kudos for distributing that stuff US Military. Non-sarcastically proud to see the Army at least able to handle the situation in Haiti, if not in New Orleans (aka within our own boundries with our own citizens)
10:09 pm on January 20th, 2010 18
Troll-Ed (John Kerry is that you?)
—
Those US Service members you so casually insult-praise are better educated than the average American(3,2,1 attack on the US Education system, US, conservatives, US Cold War Policy without a Warsaw Pack, or GWB), demographicaly are middle class and are doing something for their country and the people of the world. (Tsunami, who was first to many towns and villiages, google it! Need more examples? Crack a history book or let me school you. Google "Disaster" as a taster….)
—
I have fought forest fires, Hurricans, searched for air crews (gruesome and humbling), and packed support for dozens of humanitarian missions. All as a volunteer and I guess as a lower class hick who couldn't get a job at Burger Chef. I'm pretty proud, not quite a Dali Lama appointed healer BG SF/PSD SAS Stone Cold Killer Party Clown, but I'm working on it. Nothing I did was special in the US military, it is part of the job which I signed up for. Everything in the US Military is exceptional.
—
Service Members also are more successful post service than the average US Citizen, less violent and create far fewer crimes per capita despite Media attempts to portray it otherwise. They are mostly productive people and patriotic, so no use to liberals or you, unless you lie to smear them as a group. (Well in line with Democratic party principals, "there is no responsibility unless we can tie you in some oblique way to a conservative issue.")
—
New Orleans…Please…the only bright spot was the US military. "Don't get stuck on stupid!" Honore was right then, and we are doing the good fight now. Do you want to see a photo of 300 school buses left in a single parking lot by the Mayor?
—
As for overall value, I remember a Soviet team watching one of our tank gunneries. One Estonian-American NCO translated everything after the fact. They were stunned that we could "stage" such a perfect engagement by two tanks. Both crews actually Q2'd which is not good in the US Army, nothing was staged, we were embarrased.
—
Much Later a Dr. M. who immigrated to the US admitted that a co-worker looking for US Bio-programs on a sanctioned US-Soviet mission came back shocked in the late 1980's. "They aren't hidding anything, I have nothing to report and any lies will be tripped up by another branch, we were allowed access to everything, there is nothing I can do, I will be punished."
—-
Pervasive evidence of exceptional competance(Soviet standards) by the US and NATO that WWIII would be lost by Russia short of nukes where everyone dies greatly decreased the longevity of the Soviet Union.(and freed tens of millions)
—
Yep ED, We are finally getting some use out of that US Military welfare system! How is the other one working out for you, the one that on-target produces democrates? You know which one, it's te "don't work and the democratic party will pay you" one.
5:01 am on January 21st, 2010 19
You say sarcastically that we should at least be able to hand out water and food considering the amount of money we give the military. But this remark willfully ignores a couple of facts. (1) Nobody else is even remotely funded well enough to be of much use in Haiti without the presence of the US military. What Hamilton describes above is no fluke. The difference in how the UN is distributing relief supplies and how the Americans are consequentially different. Blue hats basically toss supplies at random into a desperate mob, who violently pounce on whoever catches a bottle or ration pack. Meanwhile, the 82nd has established a security perimeter and an orderly line of 50 Haitians are moved through a queue per minute. This takes an enormous amount of pre-planning, discipline, and, indeed, money to pull off. But the result is that Haitians at the 82nd's site are much more likely to end up with rations without being physically assaulted than they would be at any other site.
(2) The amount of money we give the military means that we can afford the carriers and the giant floating hospitals. Due to its enormous cost, the carrier obviously is a rare machine in the world. However, without the money spent to build the several we have, the Haitians would most certainly be in a worse postition than they already are today. The carrier–the USS Carl Vinson–and the hospital ship effectively triples the number of port entries into the city. This is how we were able to rapidly improve air congestion at the air port. Without the carrier, the air congestion most certainly would have delayed relief effort across the board and could have even cost the lives of foreign emergency crew.
This is because the reason the French plane described above was turned away was because the traffic congestion above the airport had become so dangerous that several mid-air collisions almost took place. That is why planes were diverted to the Dominican Republic–it was to decrease the traffic and increase safety. To find distasteful the value of using our expensive military assets in disaster relief work is to be deeply ignorant of what it takes to do a quality job in a disaster area like Haiti's. At the very least, you have no clue as to the logistics challenge involved in the effort. The supplies handed out at the American site is the end point of the movement of relief supplies. To even get to the distribution site is where most of the defense money has been spent.
(3) Part of what makes our military such good value is not just their excellence, but also their multiple use. As is visibly demonstrated in Haiti, the personnel in the US military is the best organized and best trained to deal with disaster relief work in places where the security, political, and civil infrastracture has been obliterated. There is no other nation, NGO, charity, or world body organization that can effectively do for Haiti what our military has been doing. All the while, while simutaneously keeping the peace around the world and increasing the likelihood that the peoples of Iraq and Afganistan will be able to live a freer more prosperous future. And to grumble about the cost just at a moment in which once again they are proving how invaluable their worth is strikes me as being willfully oblivious. But the Haitian leadership is not so ignorant. They are the ones who invited the US military to intervene.
The reason the majority of Americans do not mind the amount of money we allocate for our military is because we see it as good value for our tax dollars. A PBS commercial which rightfully praises the PBS system during pledge drives says it all; the top two public programs the citizenry sees as providing the most bang for their buck are (1) the military and then (2) PBS. I think that the most important reason why the military is largely well-run is because if they make mistakes, people die. They make blunders here and there, but they have a tradition of turning mistakes into good lessons for future use. But overall, it is not good analysis to focus solely on the mistakes they make and ignore the obvious and essential good they provide and have provided the country and the world. Certainly, it is difficult to understand why someone who visits a blog on the subject of Korea should be so dismissive of the US military's ability to provide a good service for the US and east Asia.
10:01 am on January 21st, 2010 20
HAMILTON,LOLLIBRATS, you're talking to a brick wall. ED, is a loser in life. He has never done anything of importance and he never will. He "hates" people that do, because everytime "they" do something it lets him know how useless as a human being he is.