Month: July 2006

In an article on the CBC website yesterday, the state-run broadcaster tries to label the Conservative government’s evacuation of Lebanese-Canadians from Lebanon as slow.

The article even gives a subtitle to a section of the article which we anticipate will be critical of the evacuation effort. The subtitle reads “Criticize evacuation work“.

The CBC reports,

Protesters also criticized Harper’s support of the Israeli mission and the slowness of the Canadian evacuation from Lebanon.

and the supporting quote that it offers has nothing to do with Harper’s evacuation efforts at all:

“Mr. Harper doesn’t represent the opinions of the Canadian people by unconditionally supporting Israel,” said Jerome Charaoui. “Canada should not support Israel, a country that is perpetuating war crimes.”

The CBC asserts that there are protestors that decry the “slow” response by the government on the evacuation efforts. The CBC even writes up a paragraph leading into what one might assume to be evidence supporting the network’s claim. Instead we just get some twit ranting about war crimes. The rest of the subsection is also weak on evidence on protesters complaining about the “slow” response.

Granted, it’s likely that there was somebody at the protests that thought the government’s response was “slow” but the CBC does not provide a supporting quote. The leading paragraph and the quotation are disjoint. This represents wishful reporting by the CBC coupled with weak follow-through.

Regarding the evacuation of foreign and resident nationals from Lebanon, the following has been said about the (what should have been) obvious difficulty in the wide-scale evacuation of citizens (50,000 Canada, 25,000 US) from Lebanon:

CNN (Jack Cafferty): Remember Katrina? France has gotten more than 700 of their people out!

MSNBC (Chris Jansing): Sort of brought back, you know, the whole Katrina thing.

Democrats (Nancy Pelosi): Just another manifestation of the Katrina mentality.

Democrats (Harry Reid): It is too bad that this is being treated as a mini Katrina.

CNN (Miles O’Brien): “You know, what we’re hearing from everybody, just about everybody, that comes off that ship, is not a very pretty picture. And one of the people we talked to earlier today equated it to a Katrina-type scenario. Is there some endemic problem in the U.S. government that it can’t handle a decent, a large-scale evacuation?”

CNN (letters picked by Jack Cafferty): >“Katrina, immigration, evacuating Americans, gasoline prices, prescription prices, health care, minimum wage, border security, almost anything that affects the average middle class American is the last priority for this administration and this Congress.” “Yes! It’s shades of Katrina again.” “Compared to other countries’ evacuations, the U.S. acts like it was unprepared to deal with the situation. Lack of planning seems to be a recurrent theme for the government in recent years, i.e. Iraq and Katrina.”

Democrats (Steny Hoyer): “This administration is not good on evacuations, as people in Katrina found out.”

CAIR (Dawud Walid): “The current administration’s minimal effort in rescuing Arab Americans and American Muslims leaves the impression to many that their lives are not as valued as other Americans. This slow response seems like a flashback to the miserable evacuation logistics of Hurricane Katrina where thousands of Americans, primarily African Americans, were left in perilous conditions.”

Toronto Star (Sean Gordon): “Searing editorials in the province’s major papers suggested the evacuation could end up being Harper’s equivalent of Hurricane Katrina”

Arab American News: “Until early Wednesday, the U.S. still had not begun evacuating its citizens. Evacuees were then supposed to come up with the money to cover their emergency-transportation costs. In the face of criticism that the plan smacked of a post-Katrina-like response, the administration backed down from its financial demand on Tuesday”

Now that you’ve got a sample of the hysterical media and political comparisons of the slower than desired exodus from Lebanon to the Katrina disaster, is the use of Katrina as a sensationalist reference point for failed government planning and execution even that valid in the real world? According to Popular Mechanics’ read of the recently released Congressional Report on the US government’s response to the hurricane of that name:

“In reality, despite organizational shortcomings, the rescue spearheaded by the National Guard and the Coast Guard turned out to be the largest and fastest in U.S. history, mobilizing nearly 100,000 responders within three days of the hurricane’s landfall. While each of the 1072 deaths in Louisiana was a tragedy, the worst-case scenario death toll would have been 60,000.”

Oh.

As has been noted around the blogosphere, the media seems to be climbing all over itself to frame the evacuation of Lebanese-Canadians from Lebanon as too “slow” and as a “disaster”.

Where was the flotilla of ships awaiting immediate rescue and extraction from Lebanon, critics asked. The same critics who rush to condemn Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper are the same brave critics that question why Canada would ever need to start spending on military equipment.

“Why does Canada need a military”, asks one babbler.

This question came in response to Stephen Harper’s desperately needed $15 billion infusion into the military, recently earmarking the funds for 3 new multifunction support ships, and helicopters among other vehicles.

Stephen Harper has recently taken over the reins of government from 13 years of Liberal mismanagement and neglect.

A 2003 Queen’s University study titled “Canada Without Armed Forces?” investigated the effect of Liberal neglect and under-funding of our military and relief efforts world-wide. The study postulated a complete Canadian disarmament by 2013.

Just about 6 short months ago to this day, Canadians selected to change the way things are done in Ottawa. Stephen Harper has a modest number of impressive accomplishments as Prime Minister so far. However, he has not undone those 13 years of Liberal neglect to Canada’s ability to react to disaster on the other side of the world.

Other reasons for delay in the rescue effort include logisitics. As other countries act to evacuate their citizens from Lebanon, a bottleneck of ships has been reported as another significant reason for delay.

Jack Layton, leader of the NDP, Canada’s left-wing party with an isolationist foreign policy, described his party’s recent efforts:

“With an estimated fifty-thousand Canadians in Lebanon, the NDP called for an evacuation plan on Friday and has been disappointed with the pace of the response.”

More funding for the military, Jack? What’s your plan? Canada needs a leader ready to do the right thing; a leader who concerns himself with more than canoe expeditions. Further, Canada needs a military to defend its sovereignty and to evacuate Canadians from hot-spots that develop around the world as a result of platitudes and appeasement.

Stephen Harper’s trip to Cyprus also represents much more than symbolism. How dire has our military/humanitarian relief network become when the Prime Minister’s plane in Paris considered a viable element of a humanitarian relief effort. While Stephen Harper can’t snap his fingers and equip our country overnight, his flying to Cyprus to personally help represents that he’ll do everything he can with what he’s got.

It seems that every time this guy goes overseas, his hero-factor goes up.