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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
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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.
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:
So no, looking after the citizens of the represented country is NOT "secondary to the diplomatic mission" it IS the diplomatic mission.
Embassies can deprioritise citizen services when diplomatic relations within the host state make it politically costly to physically 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.
Got it. Fair enough.