Can We Please Stop Comparing the Haiti Disaster to Katrina?

By now, this particular event should need no introduction.  However, here is a quick recap just in case.  Earlier this week, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the nation of Haiti.  A humanitarian crisis occurred in its wake, of course, but that is not all.  The quake pretty much leveled parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and while nobody can even guess at a death toll from the tragedy, it is pretty much common knowledge that it will be high.  While foreign aid is pouring into the region as fast as it can be sent, there are some delays getting it, in some cases literally, on the ground in Haiti.

The primary issue is that in addition to blocking many of the roads, the quake only left one of Port-au-Prince’s runways open and made the port almost inoperable.  With the amount of aid flights going to Haiti, what was a relatively sleepy airport before the quake now has the incoming volume of a major international airport, and the “control tower” as it were is a couple of US Air Force personnel with a radio, according to the New York Times.  Compounding the issue, there is almost no fuel left on the ground to refuel the planes that do land, much less anywhere to put the offloaded aid packages.  Many aid flights are now going through Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, instead, as it was relatively untouched by the actual quake.

In addition to the flood of aid organizations sending food, medical supplies, and personnel to the country, the U.S. military is going to play a large role in the relief effort.  They are starting to arrive or on the way, but naturally it will take some time.  For many Americans, the closest major disaster anyone can compare this to is Hurricane Katrina back in the summer of 2005.  This is a very poor comparison at best.  For one, in Haiti there is not a fully functional major airport an hour up the interstate from Port-au-Prince.  Santo Domingo is close, but the roads from there to Haiti’s capital are nowhere near as equipped to handle a large volume of traffic as an American interstate, which was built for the purpose of quickly moving the army around.  While FEMA’s mismanagement led Hurricane Katrina to be one of the signature failures of the Bush administration, the military’s response, specifically that of the National Guard, was done right, once Louisiana’s Governor sent them in, of course.  However, this is less about the lessons of Katrina than it is about how those lessons will not necessarily work in Haiti.

Simple geography renders the comparison to be weak; New Orleans, after all, is on the North American mainland, and transportation of a large amount of goods overland is actually possible.  Haiti, on the other hand, is on an island, and a relatively small one at that.  By necessity, all relief must either be flown in directly, or sent in by sea.  According to the New York Times article linked above, one representative of the World Food Programme, Mr. Greg Barrow, observed that “Realistically, for us to bring in food, the priority is by sea.”  Thus, repairing the port is a priority before the bulk of relief supplies can start arriving.  A further difference to Katrina is that while there were warnings in advance of the hurricane, the people of Haiti had no such warning.  Even if they had, there was really nowhere they could have gone. As such, even if all else were equal in this case, if New Orleans were suddenly hit with a disaster on this scale without warning, the death toll would be much higher and relief efforts that much more complex.

The more appropriate comparison would be to the tsunami in Indonesia a little over five years ago.  Indonesia is a nation of over 17,000 islands, and aside from being much farther away from the United States and other sources of aid than Haiti, their situation five years ago was quite similar.  A major disaster without warning, and a massive relief effort that was hampered by the lack of decent access to the disaster zone are but two of the similarities.  In Haiti, as in Indonesia five years ago, the situation is just the opposite; the conditions on the ground hinder the response.  While it is a race against time to get supplies moving to those who need them, that itself is only a matter of time, and the relief effort has only really just begun.

Guantanamo’s Not Closing Yet…Is Anyone Surprised?

Well, I’m pretty sure we all saw this one coming.  According to CNN, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted on the Sunday talk shows that Guantanamo’s closing would take longer than expected.  What a shocker: it’s not as if there was any opposition to the closure, right?  Sarcasm aside, I could have written this two or three months ago.  That begs the question, why am I only just now getting to it?

That answer is pretty easy; it has been about 9 months since President Obama signed the executive order calling for the closure.  Closing a major prison holding detainees from around the world that may or may not pose a security risk is a very complicated affair: it is necessary to give it some time.  Nine months out of a one year timetable is enough time to reevaluate the task at hand.  So, what happened?

Quite simply, the effort to close it got bogged down in the details of making it happen.  As USA Today reports, there are still some fairly large hurdles to closing down Guantanamo.  According to the article, there were issues compiling the evidence on each prisoner.  The main issue is one that is too common in our government: agencies not talking to each other and sharing information.  Isn’t that why President Bush established the Department of Homeland Security?  Theoretically, our government agencies should have been on the same page with this information from the start.  Unfortunately, it seems that theory is once again starkly different from practice.

The central issue here, though, is where to keep all the detainees who are ineligible for release or transfer to another nation.  This is the most contentious issue in the closing of Guantanamo.  It is also a textbook case of the “Not in my Backyard” (NIMBY) syndrome.  Everyone wants the positive effects of the closure of Guantanamo, only as long as someone else has to deal with the negatives.  Problem is, we quickly run out of “someone else”‘s, and then nobody gets the benefits.  Obviously the federal government has a bit more power and influence than a county government or a corporation, but there was no clear idea of a potential site for the prison until recently.  Now, officials are considering a maximum security prison in Michigan, or the Army’s Fort Leavenworth, the traditional American military prison, to house the detainees.  However, both sites would need to undergo renovations and security upgrades to house these detainees, adding to a delay in the plan.

The third major issue in the Guantanamo delay is what to do with the detainees that are acquitted by whatever court system the government chooses to use in the cases.  Most of the detainees are not U.S. citizens, and so releasing them into the U.S. is not acceptable to the administration or the American public.  However, most of our allies are reluctant to take the detainees, out of similar concerns.

Most people in this country agree that closing the prison at Guantanamo will be highly beneficial for our country’s international image.  We also tend to agree that keeping the detainees in limbo is a bad thing; they should have to face an internationally-accepted trial as soon as possible.  So why can’t we get the political will to get it done?