Public Relations not Aid - Harper used Haiti for Political Gain

[nicky10013]

Members of Canada's disaster relief team deployed to earthquake-ravaged Haiti without proper gear and training, while confusion and conflicting priorities allowed reporters to board military flights into the country ahead of critical medical aid, according to a post-mission report.

Equipment used to refrigerate perishable medicines was delayed because other, unnamed groups were prioritizing flight manifests.

The document also suggests that the political imperative of appearing to be engaged in the massive humanitarian effort to clear rubble, treat the injured and provide shelter and food bungled certain responses.

“The push to deploy rapidly may have satisfied the strategic objective of appearance that Canada was doing something,” the document says. “However, it adversely affected the operational objective of providing rapid and effective humanitarian aid.”

And people were called cynical for saying Harper was politicizing the tragedy. This is pretty disgusting no matter how you try to slice it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/military-rushed-to-haiti-without-guns-ammo-first-aid-cast-aside-for-media/article1634565/

Edited July 9, 2010 by nicky10013

[Jack Weber]

Politicians sleazily(is that a word?) using human misery and tragedy for cheap political gain?

No way!!!!!

And a perogie on top of that!!!!

Rememeber the sloganeering on the lawn signs during the last election?

"Stand up for Canada!!!"

[Moonbox]

Big whoopy.

Reporters travel on passenger planes as far as I'm aware of. Refrigeration equipment doesn't generally travel on passenger cabins...maybe I'm wrong I dunno.

[bush_cheney2004]

Well, next time, if the DART needs more guns, ammunition, and body armour to fight off those starving Haitians, you know who to call!

[segnosaur]

Reporters travel on passenger planes as far as I'm aware of. Refrigeration equipment doesn't generally travel on passenger cabins...maybe I'm wrong I dunno.

Actually, the article points out that the reporters were actually bumping security personnel off the flights, not necessarily refrigeration equipment. (And some security people were necessary, after all, you couldn't send supplies out without any protection. (The refrigeration equipment was bumped by "unnamed groups", so who knows what they were or what they were doing.)

There does appear to have been a huge clusterf*ck going on, with a lot of mistakes by many groups. Not sure if "politics" played as big a role as other problems. (The article had mentioned other problems, such as "...the core group of military personnel that's supposed to be in a state of high readiness with equipment stored in a special ‘High Readiness Warehouse’ didn't appear fully ready to deploy.")

Just wondering, has this been the first use of the new Canadian C-17 Globemaster for any sort of disaster relief? If so, that might explain part of the problem. (In the past, the Canadian forces sometimes had to rent space on planes. That would give our government time to organize things properly. Now, with our own large cargo planes we can deploy a lot more rapidly, but it means we might make more mistakes at the beginning.)

[segnosaur]

Well, next time, if the DART needs more guns, ammunition, and body armour to fight off those starving Haitians, you know who to call!

Actually there were cases where soldiers providing relief aid had to fire on people:

From: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6132RS20100204

...food handouts were often chaotic in the capital. On a couple of occasions, U.N. soldiers fired tear gas into hungry crowds jostling for a limited amount of goods.

From: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/02/world/main6165428.shtml

Twenty armed men blocked a road and tried to hijack a convoy of food for earthquake victims, but were driven off by police gunfire, U.N. officials said...

Armed security forces are needed to ensure that:

A: Food and other aid does not get stolen

B: resources are distributed equally across affected areas (so you don't have a riot amongst hungry Haitians)