You know all those wibbles about the US Military not allowing aid flights to land? About how it is is troops that get priority etc, and this shows that there\’s a military takeover going on?
Well, geek is as geek does and this is well geeked.
It\’s all about the shortage of forklifts in Haiti (I paraphrase).
At least it’s not a shortage of fork handles.
As an engineer – absolutely. Too much complaining from people who wouldn’t know how to cope for ten seconds without their government support structure. They think they can just charter a plane and fly in whenever. Shit happens and when a forklift breaks down or a plane goes technical you can’t pick and choose who goes around, next in the queue is next in the queue.
I would have liked some more technical details though 🙂 Still, the OPDS link alone was worth the entry price. Didn’t know about that one.
This engineer agrees with everything in that article too. The military need to go in first in a situation like that, because they have engineers and logistics expertise.
Just sending food and water isn’t the point. Food and water do no good unless they can get into your mouth, and your mouth isn’t at the bloody airport.
Some years back, there was, apparently, nearly complete absence of logistic considerations in the furnishing of humanitarian aid to Mogadishu–permitting the commandeering of the supplies and their divvying-up by local warlords and leading to the “Blackhawk Down” incident. That was, in my estimation, not a failure so much of the too-late military assistance as a failure of the
humanitarian (UN?) authorities in drafting the
proper, militarily-supported logistic plan to accomplish the goals sought. (Which, in hindsight, might well include letting all starve until the warlords no longer posed a threat to more satisfactory distribution.) Such times (of which Haiti is now one) call for making choices none of which are desirable but (like triage) one must be selected as the best “payoff” and thus justifying the use of resources.