Bit of a rap on the knuckles (FR) this morning from LeMonde's Washington correspondent, who accuses the Obama administration of allowing arrogance to get in the way of efficacy in its response to the relief effort in Haiti. At least that is how they are spinning a little noticed report in USA Today published Sunday. Evidently when the first US Air Force convoy landed in Port-Au-Prince, they found the airport in chaos. "One day after the earthquake struck, relief planes were coming in from all directions, landing on a first-come-first-served basis and getting too close to one another on the ground. Nobody was coordinating. Aid wasn't moving. The air-traffic control tower was damaged and unsafe." That description would seem to justify the US's decision to unilaterally take command of the airport and all air traffic control operations. But according to LeMonde's correspondent, this led to French, Italian, and Brazilian planes getting rerouted to other airports in the region "without any higher authority justifying" such actions. If the UN had been able to step in, she sniffles, they would never have allowed the US to take such actions.
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