235
Multiple US embassies are telling Americans they cannot evacuate or help them get out of the Middle East
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
235 points (100.0% liked)
World News
54464 readers
2973 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Maybe I'm showing my ignorance here, but isn't that like one of their major responsibilities?
I lived in Saudi Arabia pre 9-11, and when Sadaam was getting Scudsy, they had people come from the embassy that gave my parents a card with instructions on what to do if there was a war. Part of that was a phone number where they could call anywhere in the country, and if you couldn't follow the instructions they'd send someone to collect you.
Man this is fucking pathetic seeing our government this fucking incompetent.
If competent people in so many departments got purged, can we still call this incompetent? I think it's about time we move over to malice.
I 1000% believe that it's malice, unfortunately.
Malice would be if they could do the jobs but refused. Incompetence stems from malicious removals, but it is incompetence because the people working are, in fact, incapable of doing the job.
This is the result of eliminating those not loyal to Trump. Unfortunately incompetence and blind loyalty are closely related traits.
State department can't always evacuate everyone. Can't spend the big bucks doing an extraction on every American because one building got hit. When the region was getting hot in 2021, state department had like five five-seater jump planes in the area to do everything.
Now you've got hundreds of people getting squirrelly and demanding a flight now when the airspace is not looking great.
There's other ways to evac people than just planes. I was just a kid when my story above happened. But my dad asked that very thing 'is it safe to fly if there's scuds in the air?' and they said that had multiple ways to get people to safety.
US Embassies exist to protect the *people of the US in foreign settings.
*people as defined by Citizens United v. FEC (2010)
Corpos only
"Corporations are people too, my friend." - Mitt Romney
Kind of. Their main purpose, though, is to represent the state for relations and dealings with the host, citizen services are secondary to this. Political capital within that relationship will determine what kind of things that they can help with, but overall you as an individual are responsible for yourself. There's many places you're kind of SOL even with an embassy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission
Ransoming countrymen of the represented country is literally one of the oldest diplomatic functions on earth and is a big part of why embassies were established in the first place.
Your own source literally defines the term "diplomatic mission" as:
Embassies can deprioritise citizen services when diplomatic relations with the host state make it politically costly or impossible, which is exactly what's happening here. That's the substantive point about the article and why citizen services are not even mentioned in the introduction.
Shame that's not what you said when I replied to you and then repeated several times in the course of this discussion.
I meant is it's not a service I'd depend on in a regional crisis as they can and will deprioritse it. It is not the main mission as the following passage to that sentence shows:
It's not even rare for embassies outside of the first world's to be openly hostile or outright useless to their own citizens in a pinch during times of peace.
Except that for Americans specifically, relying on the embassy for support and evacuation when a regional crisis arises has been a safe bet for nearly 100 years.
Certainly in the post-WWII era, if you followed the advice of the state department on not traveling to really dangerous places, and didn’t do something to get yourself into trouble (like getting involved in crimes), the US would use considerable resources to ensure an American citizen’s safe passage home. In fact, the hostility to Iran has some basis in the fact that Iran took over the American embassy during the revolution in 1978 and held the personnel hostage, a pretty blatant rejection of standard diplomatic norms. From a legal standpoint that was effectively an invasion of the US because an embassy is sovereign territory.
So regardless of your wording, this represents a pretty basic shift away from previous norms, especially given that the crisis people are fleeing is entirely a creation of the US government.
I totally agree with you here, this is the important, intended subtext I left out. We just are not used to not having a monopoly on political capital.
I said one of.
I'm saying it's a bonus to a diplomatic mission rather than a duty.