Time for me to earn my stripes as a cold, cruel, heartless member of the hard right-wing conservative crowd (though I would normally consider myself a moderate individual that may lean a little right at times).
It seems that congress had gotten wised-up back in 2003 and decided that whenever U.S. citizens are evacuated from another country (especially where hostilities have broken out???) that those individuals will have to pay their own way for their transportation to safety.
Sorry to break the news to anyone disaffected by that law, but personally I think it's a pretty good one. If you choose to be in harms way, then darn straight, you are to be responsible for your own tail and you should be the one paying the freight if you stayed around just a little too long and are left needing the emergency ride out of town.
We all make choices in life, and while I understand that some people feel that they may not be able to make different choices because of their income and own economic situations, choosing to work in, or live in an area where things may become hostile for your own safety is not a good decision. I salute the men and women that choose to take risks and know in advance that they may have to leave at a moments notice to leave behind an area that was seemingly friendly but suddenly has become inhospitable to them, but normally those individuals are being compensated by their employers for the added risk, and if they were to take any other means of travel out of the area they most certainly would be paying costs to do so. Why anyone would feel that the U.S. government should be paying to transport them to safety -- other than perhaps the costs to station U.S. Marine (or other services) guards to help keep them safe -- is beyond me.
Unfortunately a few liberal leaners in congress, including many that ACTUALLY VOTED FOR THE LAW THEY ARE NOW DECRYING, are upset that these costs are being passed on, or at least are being attempted to be passed on by the U.S. State department who is making evacuees sign paper work acknowledging that they owe the transportation costs for their hasty exits from Lebanon and other similar war zone/hostile areas.
How we'll ever get close to any sort of budget discipline is beyond me, given that we continue to give money away on issues like this protecting the hides of people that made their own choices. Again, assisting these people in getting evacuated and even providing the transportation is the right thing to do, but it does not mean that the costs should be placed on the backs of the U.S. tax-payers. Give the bills to the people taking the trips and let them get the money back from their employers. That is as it should be.
