So Nick called again today. And guess what? He’s still in Spain. At this point it is getting a little ridiculous and you might be asking, why in the world is he still in Spain? Well, the fact is, it’s because of the earthquake in Haiti.
The military has diverted all supplies and troops to Haiti. So that is why he was flying on an unreliable old C5…they were supposed to take a C17 but those are all in Haiti. And now he is stuck in Spain waiting for his plane to be fixed. And why don’t they send a different plane? They don’t have any. It is completely unheard of for this to happen. All the troops are on food and water rations because all their food and water is getting sent to Haiti.
And get this! The troops that are being sent to Haiti are being technically “deployed” there which means that when they get back, they will have at least 6 months if not more of “dwell time” which is the time after a deployment that they can’t be deployed again. SOOO…How in the world are we supposed to have a troop surge in Afghanistan when we are rendering so many of our troops undeployable by sending them to Haiti??? (at least 19,000 are in Haiti as of a few days ago, probably more by now, they are saying it could get up to 33,000. And by the way some units that were headed for Afghanistan were rerouted to Haiti!)
So by helping Haiti we are leaving our soldiers in Afghanistan (including Nick) with less man power and thus they aren’t as safe as they could be. Many soldiers who have already done several deployments and were hoping for a break are now needed to go again. And those soldiers that are in Haiti are not safe either. Things are pretty dangerous there as well.
Is it worth it? Are we spreading ourselves too thinly?
