Mark Krikorian at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") takes a stab at answering Michael Rubin's question.
Money quote(s):
"(Y)our point about the thousands of Lebanese with dual U.S. citizenship raises an important point — why should a U.S. Marine, who enlisted to defend his fellow countrymen from harm, risk his life rescuing people who have not fully committed to the American nation? Dual citizenship — a “self-evident absurdity” in TR’s words — means, in this case, people who want to live in Lebanon, as Lebanese, and perhaps even vote there, but who also want to make sure that if things go bad someone else will risk his life to rescue them."
Lebanon blew up pretty quickly, as I recall. Lots of college and h.s. age kids visiting their grandparents back in the old country. And lots of naturalized U.S. citizens who decided their retirement dollars would stretch further back in said old country; not necessarily folks who've done anything wrong or falsely.
Americans take it as their God-given and Constitutional right that they can go anywhere without hindrance, that they can live and work where they please, and then if things go "South," Big Sam will come and get them. And their relatives back in each of those congressmembers' districts have the same assumption. So it would definitely behoove them to have Mr. Rubin's question somewhere in the back of their collective minds.
(Disclaimer: Like many people in my line of work, I participated, however tangentally, in support of the Lebanon evacuation. Collectively, we were able to help a lot of people get out of harm's way. It's a part of my life's body of work of which I'm justifiably somewhat proud.
And at the same time, as new reports about other country's dual nationals and legal residents came out, about how people who were supposedly refugees from Lebanon had moved back and were living off of the public assistance received, as refugees, from those European countries.... well, I'm sure we have our share of welfare and public assistance fraudsters too. But asking, or looking for answers, of such questions is way down on the to-do list when you're scrambling to organize an evacuation.)
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