President Obama announced today that he had approved the use of military planes to transport Egyptian refugees from the Tunisian border back to Egypt.The flights will operate between Tunisia and Egypt. A Department of Defense official said that USAID would charter additional civilian aircraft to evacuate foreign nationals who are fleeing strife-torn Libya via the Tunisian border. Spain and German are sending aircraft and warships to aid in the evacuation of foreigners (mostly Egyptians) while India and South Korea have dispatched Naval vessels to evacuate their citizens.
Defense officials says the operation will be run by Africa Command (Africom) which is based in Stuttgart, Germany. One of the officials says Africom will use between two and four C-130 aircraft based in Germany to carry out the flights between Tunisia and Egypt. C-130’s are smaller aircraft compared to C-17’s so it looks like they could be making a lot of trips.
You know what? I hope I don't come off like I'm against using US Air Force aircraft and personnel to evacuate foreign nationals from the escalating and increasingly bloody clusterfuck in Libya, because I'm not....
Simply put, It's the right thing to do......
I'm sure there were some logistical concerns as well. But with that said, how come these assets weren't made available to the American citizens who needed them first?
Food for thought.
A no-fly zone would be nice about now!
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