CITE SOLEIL, HAITI — Were this any other deployment, as the convoy worked its way down narrow, smoke-filled streets, Army medic Spc. Willie Green would be clenched in the back of the Humvee, praying no one got hurt but just the same reciting medical procedure over and over in his head.

Downrange is a world where you “prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” Green said. “It’s gonna happen. You’ve got to anticipate. You’re out there and they want you dead just as much as you want to return the favor.”

In this densely-packed, rough-and-tumble neighborhood, the pungent smell and the milling crowds are familiar. So are the burning trash, the feral dogs and the waving children chasing the convoy.

But in Haiti the 6,000 troops on the ground aren’t seeking out an enemy. They are helpers rather than aggressors.

“Everywhere I go, I get welcomed with open arms,” said Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, head of Task Force Haiti.

“We’re here by invitation.”

Before leaving Fort Bragg, N.C., one company commander with the the 82nd Airborne Division stood on a bench near the flight line and told his Soldiers: “The No. 1 thing I want you to understand is we are going to Haiti to help people.”

“We’re not going for gunfights,” Capt. Andrew Salmo said he told his men. “Knocking heads together ain’t going to help them.”

For the battle-hardened noncommissioned officers, it’s a steep change of pace.

Staff Sgt. James Gresham, a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, said he initially felt exposed without his body armor.

“To come here and be in a very relaxed security posture, not having to roll around looking for IEDs or worry about suicide bombers and that kind of stuff, it’s a pretty big switch for us,” he said.

But when the crowds start swarming, old instincts kick in.

“The ones with combat experience want to be a little more aggressive,” said 1st Sgt. Vaughn Overton of Company C.

Overall though, there is a surprising lack of combat patches on the arms of the soldiers in Haiti with the 82nd Airborne. For some companies, 70 percent are on their first deployment.

“This is an eye-opener for a lot of them,” Overton said.

The 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, to which they belong, is the military’s Global Response Force, ready to react to a disaster anywhere in the world with boots on the ground in less than 96 hours.

Lt. Col. Pat Hynes, commander of 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, said being a part of such a unit comes with mixed feelings since it has meant “being home for a while.”

“The Soldiers are watching those on their left and right deploying, and they want to go. They want to contribute,” he said.

Most of the lieutenants are still waiting for their chance to lead in war. 

“I can see this look in their eyes,” Salmo said. “They think they’re missing something. I tell them: ‘What you’re doing here, it’s a great experience.’”

Predawn on a recent morning, the soldiers walked the streets of Cite Soleil, a neighborhood of about 250,000 packed into four-square-kilometers of tin-roofed shacks and makeshift tents. Their weapons hung loosely in front of them. The mission was to distribute thousands of bottles of water and food rations. The grateful Haitians, quickly and without complaint, followed all instructions given over a bullhorn by translators.
Unpacking high-energy biscuits to be handed out to the children, Sgt. Otis Richardson shrugged and said he’d rather be in Afghanistan.

Then a line of happy kids, many of whom wore only T-shirts, came crashing toward him with hands outstretched. He knelt to their height and smiled and laughed with each one as he handed them biscuits.

“OK, so yeah, I enjoyed that,” the 26-year-old said after the last kid walked away.

At the main hospital in Port-au-Prince, any time a soldier struck up a conversation with a Haitian, he’d be surrounded by more than a dozen within in minutes.

“I wish I could speak Creole so I could speak with more them,” said Gresham, who was gregarious and relaxed on the streets here.

It was a proximity that just never would be allowed in combat, and many Soldiers said they enjoyed the opportunity to be in uniform without the element of fear - whether for their own personal safety or instilling it in others.

“It shows the other side of what we’re capable of,” Gresham said. “We’re very good at killing terrorists in combat, but were also capable of going out to other countries and helping a people who are in dire need.”

Still they recognize that what they’re doing will have an impact measured in days. 

“The depth of the poverty here is staggering,” Salmo said. “They eat mud. They eat mud cookies. So we aren’t fixing that tomorrow.”

No one has said yet how long U.S. troops will be in Haiti, but Keen said he thought it would be “a tragedy — a tragedy — to not have sufficient forces to feed the people.”

Still, some of the Soldiers have not been so moved by the experience.

In the back of a truck, jabbering to no one in particular, one sergeant flippantly remarked: “I joined the Army to shoot people. Nowhere in that contract did I say I wanted to come to Haiti and hand out humanitarian aid.”

Officers, while never pleased to hear something like that, say they understand the motivation behind such crassness.

“The Soldiers see the effect we’re having and it’s inspirational,” Salmo said. “At the same time, our job as infantrymen is to fight the enemy. That’s what we want to do.”

Despite being a part of the Global Response Force, Company A hasn’t been training for disaster relief.

“You have to have priorities,” Salmo said. “If you go to combat and all you have are these helper skills you’re probably going to have a problem. But if you train for Afghanistan and go to Haiti, you’ll be in good shape.”

The Soldiers are finding that some of the same skills needed to negotiate with the tribes of Afghanistan are coming into play in Haiti. The Army is tapping into the local leadership, often relying on pastors to direct them to those most in need.

Capt. Ramon Ramos, commander of Company C, attended a gathering this week of what is essentially a township council, using the opportunity to reach out and let them know the Army was there to help. It was much like a chai meeting in Iraq where soldiers sit cross-legged with local leaders, sipping tea and forging relationships.

In fact, many of the officers and senior NCOs see relief in Haiti as good preparation for counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. 

“This is a great warm-up act,” Salmo said. “Especially dealing with the local population. Right now in Afghanistan that’s where the war is going to be won — with the locals.”

He added: “The people will always be critically important to what we do, whether handing out food or going to war.”

President Obama is roping in former Presidents George W. Bush and Clinton to help coordinate Haitian earthquake relief efforts. It's a gesture that makes Obama look bipartisan and gives Bush a chance to start shaping his post-presidential legacy.

 




Washington --- Maybe President Obama is doing former President George W. Bush a favor.

President Obama plans to announce that his immediate predecessor will team up with former President Clinton to help on humanitarian relief efforts and fund-raising for Haiti. Obama called Mr. Bush Wednesday night, and he accepted, according to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

For both ex-presidents, the role seems logical. Mr. Clinton was already the UN special envoy for Haiti when a massive earthquake struck Tuesday. And he served in a similar capacity along with the first President Bush five years ago after the Asian tsunami – at the behest of the 43rd president, the second Bush.

The junior Bush had signaled a year ago, as he was leaving office, that he would serve if asked. But there’s an awkward aspect to Bush’s new assignment.

“The thing about ‘43’ is that of course he was the acrimonious target of the Democrats who replaced him, and was perceived as discredited, and now he’s being offered a little bit of redemption by those former opponents,” says Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “That makes this interesting.”

One episode that particularly damaged Bush’s image was the federal government’s response to hurricane Katrina in 2005. Though local and state governments also fell short, Bush never recovered politically.

For Democrat Obama, the inclusion of his Republican predecessor in relief efforts adds a bipartisan touch to the response. Obama came to office promising a new tone in Washington, but he and the Republicans quickly reverted to the city’s partisan ways.

For Bush, involvement with Haitian relief allows him to start shaping his post-presidential legacy. For the past year, Bush has laid low in his new hometown of Dallas, avoiding comment on his successor. In contrast, former Vice President Dick Cheney has had plenty to say – mostly negative – about Obama, especially his handling of terrorism.

Bush has given few speeches since leaving office, but in one, delivered in May at a high school graduation in New Mexico, he commented on how “liberating” it is to be out of office – and at times humbling. He recounted a recent walk out with his dog Barney.

“There I was, former president of the United States of America, with a plastic bag in my hand,” he said. “Life is returning back to normal.”

Now, with Haiti, Bush has much weightier issues to address.

Some 5,700 US marines and soldiers are expected to join Haitian earthquake relief efforts this weekend. The UN says its peacekeeping force should be in command. The US says no.

Washington --- The marines are about to hit the shores of Port-au-Prince – an arrival that would almost certainly send shivers up spines anywhere else in Latin America.

But amid the Haitian earthquake relief effort – in a country that has no military of its own and has hosted an international peacekeeping force since 2004 – the arrival is unlikely to cause many ripples among locals.

Yet the dispatch of some 2,200 marines – as well as 3,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division – is raising some command and assignment questions.

When the troops arrive, perhaps this weekend, who will be in charge, given that the Haitian government is almost disintegrated and the 9,000-strong UN peacekeeping force, MINUSTAH, is dealing with its own losses?

Will the 5,500 US military personnel be part of an international, or an American, security effort?

Who's the boss?

“It’s fully desirable that all these forces should be coordinated with the UN MINUSTAH commander there,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday.

US officials, on the other hand, say that while the US may “coordinate” with the peacekeeping operation’s leadership, US troops will be under American command.

“We’ll be under US command supporting a UN mission on behalf of the Haitian government and the Haitian people,” said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, when asked Thursday to clarify the command structure for what is expected to be a three-month deployment of US forces.

Learning from the tsunami

The command question may cause some initial confusion, but it is likely to be quickly ironed out – especially given the recent experience the US has in dispatching the military to disaster zones, say US security and international relief experts.

“We sent 8,000 marines to Indonesia after the tsunami, and that intervention stands out as one of the best examples of use of the US military in a disaster,” says Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense who is now an analyst at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Not only did the Marines accomplish significant humanitarian objectives, Mr. Korb notes, but America’s image in Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim country – shot up as a result. “The use of the military in this way really undermines the Al Qaeda narrative,” he says.
Haiti: a country without a government

The Haiti case is different, however, in part because the Haitian government is so weak, and in some estimations practically nonexistent, after the earthquake.

President René Préval is alive, but the Parliament and several ministry buildings collapsed, taking the lives of as-yet uncertain numbers of legislators and government officials.

The US says it is coordinating with the Haitian government – by which it appears to mean a little-seen President Préval – but acknowledges that in the short-term there will be little government to deal with.

“There’s no question that the Haitian Government is challenged,” the State Department’s Mr. Crowley says. “They have received a very serious blow.” But he adds that the US objective is “not only to provide lifesaving support to the Haitian people but to rebuild the capacity of the Haitian Government.”
Help wanted, calling Cuba?

The US needs to remember that it is part of an international effort, something Korb says the US sometimes forgets. In the case of Haiti, “We’ll be the first among equals, because of our size and proximity and our capabilities,” he says, “but we shouldn’t limit our approach to just what we can do.”

In that vein, Korb offers a politically daring proposition: The US should consider tapping the expertise of neighboring Cuba to help address Haiti’s needs.

“We should stop and think that Cuba right next door has some of the best doctors in the world,” he says. “We should see about flying them in.”

At the same time, the US must be careful not to run roughshod over historical sensitivities in the region about US military interventions.

“We’re not taking over Haiti," said Crowley. "We are helping to stabilize Haiti. We’re helping to provide them lifesaving support and material, and we’re going to be there over the long term to help Haiti rebuild.”

WASHINGTON --- The Pentagon is mobilizing a massive relief effort to help Haiti earthquake victims, but there are worries that the response will still take days to be in place.

The military’s efforts are at the front end of what President Obama said Thursday would be a $100 million U.S. commitment to Haitian relief.

But it is taking time to get there. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was expected to arrive Thursday afternoon but now will not be there until today. The USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, hasn’t left the port of Baltimore yet because it still needs to collect supplies and personnel.

While the assessment teams are still conducting their review of the need in Haiti, mostly in Port-au-Prince, near the epicenter of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake, there is a clear need for medical assistance.

The aircraft carrier arriving today has three operating rooms, several dozen hospital beds and can produce fresh water. The Bataan amphibious ship also possesses some medical assets and is being outfitted with more. But it is the Comfort hospital ship, with its 250 hospital beds and 12 operating rooms, that would appear to meet the most pressing need in Haiti.

A week for hospital ship to get there

Pentagon officials say that ship, one of the Navy’s two hospital ships, won’t leave Baltimore until this weekend and not arrive until sometime at the end of next week.

“It’s a slow moving vessel, it’s an older vessel, so it will take about a week to get down there once it gets all crewed up,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

Ground troops are also being sent, including a brigade of about 3,500 Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C., and about 2,000 Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit in Camp Lejeune, N.C. The mission of the ground forces remains unclear, as the relief effort unfolds and government officials wait to see if any civil unrest would require an American ground presence.

Pentagon officials say the Army unit will arrive in Haiti by the end of the week. The Marines, who will arrive on the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group ships, will wait offshore and only go into Haiti depending on what occurs.

Obama: U.S. moving 'as quickly as possible'

“Even as we move as quickly as possible, it will take hours, and in many cases days, to get all of our people and resources on the ground,” Obama said at a news conference at the White House Thursday, his second meeting with the press about Haiti.

Roads remain impassable, the main port is “badly damaged,” and poor communications pose major challenges, he said.

“None of this will seem quick enough if you have a loved one who’s trapped, if you’re sleeping on the streets, if you can’t feed your children,” Obama said. “But it’s important that everybody in Haiti understand, at this very moment, one of the largest relief efforts in our recent history is moving towards Haiti.”

The U.S. will likely be the largest contributor to relief, and military officials say it takes time to assess the need and move in those supplies and assets that are most needed. But the enormity of the effort lends itself to feeding a perception that the military bureaucracy gets in the way.

Frustration at logistical challenge

Pentagon officials themselves seemed to express frustration at the logistical challenge they were confronting. Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command, briefing reporters Wednesday, said the initial assessment team would “finally” arrive later that afternoon.

Fraser, who is new at Southern Command but now finds himself at the forefront of the military’s relief effort, is expected to update reporters on the situation in Haiti later Thursday.

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials disagree with any contention that the U.S. military is moving too slowly.

“I just don’t subscribe to that premise,” said Whitman. “I think the U.S. military has been very forward leaning on this and in terms of moving assets and anticipating requirements.”

Other officials point out that it took the hospital ship Comfort five days to mobilize and get underway after Hurricane Katrina. For the Haiti earthquake, they say, it's taking just half that long.