But they don't have a MEU sitting off conflict zones waiting to leap into action. The United States will literally send the Marines to save a citizen. A person from, say, Ecuador probably doesn't enjoy the same amount of risk coverage.
You've been watching too many movies, I'm afraid. The reality is (and it happened in Yemen recently) that the US will just shrug and tell you to go ask some other country for help. No MEUs set foot in Yemen when things went south there.
The last I heard, the Houthis let the Americans go.
Navy SEALs from the Navy SMU parachuted into Africa in the dead of night to save a missionary kidnapped from a known conflict zone, killing 6 of 7 combatants (one wonders if they let the last guy go to spread Fear amongst his fellows). Perhaps some of you had different experiences (and/or perhaps the State Department really, really wanted you to leave), but that doesn't erase the rescue of Americans such as this man:
We sent the best of the best in to save him. Not the JV team, the varsity. Before you whine, ask yourselves if perhaps there was some motive to telling you that nobody would help you if you didn't leave. Maybe they were trying to manage their risk.
>That could have been just Trump pandering to his base.
That's pretty weak, you have to admit. Wouldn't Obama send the same men in to save a citizen? I think he would. This is undeniably what our military is for, what those special mission units are for, and what those operators live for. They went in to do God's Work, and luckily this time it worked with no Good Guy casualties. Why would you doubt this?
> How come no SEALs have parachuted to rescue Jeffery yet, huh? Reinforces my theory that it was just election-time pandering by Trump.
Maybe because they don't have actionable intel to find and fix him? Maybe because the Bad Guys weren't so stupid as to use something that would show up on our various SIGINT collection platforms? It's not always a great big Trumpian conspiracy.
> But how did they get out? Who picked them up?
The Omani military, our allies. I suspect more than one person on that flight didn't have an Omani passport.
I remember being in Kenya before the election that followed post-election violence previously (scores dead). Ambassador said point blank, "You need to take care of yourselves. We only have a handful of marines and they'll be spending their time protecting or destroying classified documents."
No, they absolutely will not. I won't go into details but I can tell you from personal experience this is unequivocally false. The USA will in most cases do exactly nothing for their citizens in distress. Even the local US embassies will refuse to get involved in almost all cases.
You know who did get involved in our situation when I was with a group of mixed citizens from USA, UK, EU etc...? The UK and Denmark. France, the USA and Germany all did nothing at all.
This myth that the USA will save citizens from any situation needs to die. It's untrue and dangerous since it encourages Americans to do stupid things because they are convinced the Marines or Seals will come save them.
Except the Marines and/or SEALs do come to save people. Perhaps there are political complications you aren't mentioning. Perhaps you got into trouble in a nation with a halfway-functioning government (so diplomacy trumps men with rifles).
It is provably true the US does send armed forces in to save citizens, and it is obviously true that many other countries simply lack the ability to do so. That isn't a license to be stupid, but it is a differentiator between countries with true power projection capabilities and those who don't have the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_unit