Perhaps, but MER missions have zero to do with protecting corporate interests. They have everything to do with minimizing impact to the environment, the marine and coastal ecosystem, and our fisheries. The Coast Guard is also tasked with protecting the Maritime Economic Defense Zone, so I guess you could argue that there is a financial motivation to protect our nation's interests, but I don't like the implication that the CG is a corporate shill. I lived in that world and I understand the mission and the people. Maybe I'm just too sensitive...
At some level we're probably just going to disagree. There is ample video of various agencies of the federal government along with local and state law enforcement being used to prevent news organizations from filming the environmental impact across the gulf coast, and the Coast Guard was one of these. I also believe that injecting nearly two million gallons of Corexit was done without regard for the impact on marine life; it was done to ensure that the oil would settle on the bottom of the gulf. So less spoiled beaches was obviously good, but the impact on marine life and ecosystem made the spill much much worse. Read the Wiki page on Corexit (FWIW, I have a degree in chemistry from UNC-CH).
And since you mentioned the Marine Economic Defense Zone (otherwise known as the Exclusive Economic Zone), this is presumably what entitled a Coast Guard cutter to board my sailboat about 3 NM off the coast of Bimini in international waters? You all forced me to reduce speed to 3 knots and spent two hours searching my boat. So long in fact that you made me arrive in Miami after dark. You all kept telling me that it was a safety search (flares, life jackets, etc.), but we all know you were looking for illegal immigrants, drugs, and guns. And you found none. But you did endanger myself and my girlfriend. And for the record, my girlfriend attended the Coast Guard Academy in 1984.
I'm glad you were or are in the Coast Guard. I know you would have done your best to rescue me if I'd triggered my EPIRB. We're not debating that. But I do believe that the US military was essentially deployed to protect BP's image in the Gulf although there's an idiom that goes something like, 'never ascribe to malice that which can otherwise be ascribed to stupidity'. So maybe all that just happened because of the same incompetence that gave us Michael Brown as FEMA director for Katrina. It's not like I claim we have a functional federal government.
