The Bush administration’s evacuation of Americans in Lebanon has been disorganized and lagged behind the efforts of other countries. As of yesterday, only a few thousand had been able to evacuate, and they departed “two days after the first Europeans left on ships.” Denmark, for example, “evacuated more than 4,000 of its citizens” by Thursday.
Conservatives have reacted to this incompetence by attacking the evacuees:
Rush Limbaugh, 7/19:
Even in the eyes of our ingrate, spoiled-rotten little children, brat-type ingrate citizens in Beirut, it’s our fault. (Crying.) “It’s a war zone. It’s a war! How do I get out? (crying) We’re having to shield ourselves from the sun in cardboard.” (sobbing) That’s embarrassing.
Fox anchor Neil Cavuto, 7/20:
The media is playing up a lot of whining, complaining Americans in this country who said there’s been no warning, no communication.
TownHall.com columnist Mike Gallagher, 7/21:
Amazingly, we’re not even going to charge these ungrateful evacuees for the free trip home. … Their sense of outrage and entitlement is slowly but surely becoming the American way. And it’s positively disgusting.
Fox anchor Steve Doocy, 7/19:
Shockingly, after they’ve been plucked out of Beirut, a lot of them are whining and complaining that, you know what, I had to sleep on the concrete and they didn’t have any food for me to eat.
Watch Fox & Friends (a Fox correspondent in Cyprus disputes Doocy’s account, describing the evacuation conditions as “really chaotic”):