How's this for gratitude?

I ran across this item on the Internet.

Sooooo. The United States goes into a war zone and evacuates a bunch of U.S. citizens (most of whom were "dual-citizens"). Then, eschewing normal procedure, the Department of State waived the fees that they charge for evacuating U.S. citizen.

Why? To pander to the mythical "Arab street", of course.

Now, I would argue that one could have reasonably predicted that some form of military violence was likely to occur in Lebanon (considering that the country has been experiencing some form of conflict for approximately the last 32 years). In other words, those Americans were there by their own choice, mired in a situation that was totally predictable. Yet we didn't charge them for the evacuation. This is unlike the situation last year in Asia when we evacuated U.S. citizens from areas that were hit by the tsunami - a phenomenon that is much less predictable than the Hezbollah-provoked destruction that rained down on Lebanon.

And what do we get for this effort? A lawsuit.

That's right, folks. The American-Arab Discrimination Committee is suing Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, charging that they mismanaged the evacuation efforts.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Nina Chahine, 19, who with her family was among the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said her wedding in the southern city of Tyre was set for July 13.

The wedding had to be postponed as family members fled the outbreak of the war, she said.

"We were on the road and the first bridge was bombed and we drove home and all the other bridges were bombed and there was absolutely no way for us to get home," Chahine told reporters outside federal court in Detroit.

"We were all American citizens and there was no way that anybody helped us. No communications nothing. I was on my way to my wedding fearing death, basically."

Chahine said her immediate family spent about $20,000 to return to Detroit via Syria and Jordan.

Dear Nina,

Here's a tip: Don't get married in countries that house illegal militias that attack other countries and hence are likely to come under counter-attack!

Crap like this sure makes me want to rush right out and rescue people from dilemmas of their own making.