'We Were Let Down:' US Marine Abandoned in Lebanon by President Biden
Thousands of Americans stranded as Israel drops US-bombs and other nations organize airlifts.
Important Update: After publication, Jad Haidar told me that the State Department arranged for him to fly from Beirut to Istanbul. He left Thursday morning, along with his service dog. He was told he would have to make his own arrangements to leave Istanbul within 72 hours. The original story is below.
Jad Haidar is a US Marine Corps veteran who enlisted after 9/11. He was awarded a Purple Heart after he was twice hit by an IED, suffering severe concussions and a traumatic brain injury, in Iraq. For years, he’s required daily assistance due to his debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder.
He’s now stranded in Lebanon, unsure of if he and his family will get out.
Haidar is among 7,000 Americans who have sought information from the US about leaving Lebanon amid Israel’s strikes across the country.
The US Embassy in Beirut on Sept. 27 said it was not evacuating US citizens and suggested those looking to leave the country book and pay for a commercial flight. On Wednesday, the State Department said it organized a flight from Beirut to Istanbul that carried around 100 Americans and their family members. Haidar was not on that flight, but he says he was told by State Department officials they were trying to get him on a plane to Istanbul on Thursday. He would be on his own once there. They have yet to provide more details, and regardless, Haidar says he feels “abandoned” and disappointed in how he’s been treated by his own government.
“I [am] still in disbelief,” Haidar said of the initial US decision not to help Americans evacuate Lebanon. It was a decision that shocked other Americans in both Lebanon and the US.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who represents Haidar, in an Instagram video, called it a “disgrace” that her team has had “to call and beg” the State Department to help get Haidar and more than 140 people in her district out of Lebanon. “We need to do better. We knew this was going to happen. We had no plans to get Americans out.” The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Haidar told me by phone on Wednesday that people keep asking, “How are you not out yet?" He said they pointed out they knew foreigners who evacuated with other governments. "And so, that's when I started thinking, you know, are these people telling lies, or is it really happening?”
Several countries have offered assistance to their nationals to evacuate Lebanon over the last week. The UK chartered a commercial flight to evacuate some of its nationals, while China said on Tuesday that all Chinese citizens who wished to leave Lebanon – more than 200 people – had been evacuated. Bulgaria and Portugal evacuated nationals, while nations like Japan and France have put military crafts on standby to help evacuate their citizens.
Haidar this week went to the Beirut airport in hopes that there might be a flight he could get on, but to no avail. While there, he watched German officials hand out food and water to their nationals who were boarding a plane that was headed out of the country. Germany said it used an Air Force plane to evacuate embassy staff and citizens with medical conditions.
Realizing other countries were helping their nationals, Haidar asked: “‘What the hell is going on here? …What the hell is going on with the United States?
“I just lost hope. I literally lost hope. I'm like, ‘Well, I guess, you know, shit, I'm stuck here, or I'm nobody, or, this means nothing to anybody.’”
“We Were Let Down”
Haidar had enlisted with the Marines, wanting to give back to the US after the September 11 attacks. “I felt like every one of us had to do something,” he said.
He was deployed to Iraq, where he stayed for two years. When an IED exploded, giving him a concussion and traumatic brain injury, he pushed against suggestions for medical release from service. He stayed only to be hit by an IED months later. He suffered a more severe concussion, prompting a medical discharge.
Haidar said he continued working with private security firms collaborating with US armed forces. But over time, he began to realize there were issues he needed to deal with. He has since been diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and anxiety. He struggles with falling asleep, talking to people, being around crowds, and making decisions, among other things.
From Dearborn, Michigan, Haidar arrived in Lebanon in early August so that his wife, who doesn’t have US citizenship, could help care for him after his father fell ill. Haidar had hoped to stay in Beirut until his wife got a visa to travel to the US. But their plans were upended less than two months later. Even if Haidar is able to leave, it’s unclear whether his wife and service dog, Maximus, will get to go with him. He worries for his wife, and not having Maximus by his side is a thought he can’t bear.
“I reiterated to the US State Department official that if he's not getting out, I'm not getting out. I mean, I'm not going to leave my dog to die,” Haidar told me. “Especially that he’s given his two and a half years just to protect me and take care…I don’t have the heart to do it,” he added.
“Maximus has pretty much kept me alive. I have moments of lows, and I cry, and I go through issues, and he literally sits on top of me and just calms me down, licks my face, licks my feet, licks my hand, just to let me know that you know, everything's all right, and I sleep better with him around, because he's more alert than I am.”
Haidar’s challenges have only been amplified since Israel escalated its strikes on Lebanon. He was walking Maximus when Israel began pounding a southern Beirut suburb on Friday. Less than a mile from the strike zone, it brought back memories of his time in the military, but with one key difference: “When you're a part of a camaraderie, a team, you have somebody to fall back on,” Haidar told me by phone. “But when you have nobody to fall back on, it's so difficult. It's extremely difficult. You don’t know who to lean on for support.”
The chaos has taken a toll on Maximus too. Haidar said he “has become so detached from reality that he's just, he's just going crazy. He's eating his feet, he's eating his tail. He doesn't respond to me anymore,” adding that he has to keep him in a cage, which only makes him go “crazy more and more.”
While Haidar awaits details from the State Department on a potential flight out of the country, he says he is disappointed by the US government’s delays, chaos, and “cold” communication.
“This is not what our country's values are built upon,” he said. “We were let down.”
Not shocking, we have witnessed so many Americans being killed by the occupation going far back as Rachel Corrie that, it is clear, imperialism only values power and profit, not people.
This is disgusting behavior from our government.