Saving Haiti
“Only the world can come to our rescue,” says a stricken Haitian.
The Haitian government, ordinarily good for nothing save corruption and exploitation, has been hard hit itself. The UN, which would ordinarily coordinate relief efforts, is busy counting its own dead, searching for its missing, and rescuing its own living.
That leaves the people of Haiti on their own, in a rapidly deteriorating situation in which the disease is starting to threaten, and looters are becoming more commonplace.
One of the diseases mentioned is measles. Why is that a problem? Half of Haiti’s children are unvaccinated and therefore at risk. Those terrible villains—Big Pharma corporations—are donating medicines, especially antibiotics.
As is so often the case in disasters, “the world” that might be relied on to help refers mainly to the United States, at least at the moment. We are near, we have the capacity, we have the resources and experience, and we also have the will, although the world even doesn’t always give us credit for it.
Not just will. Somewhere in the American spirit is a respect for human life that seems absent in large parts of the world. Sometimes it rears its head in our Pro-choice-Pro-life debates, when other ‘civilized’ western and non-western countries wonder why it’s such a big deal to us, why it makes Americans so heated. Most times it shows up as a need to help people.
I think the citizens of many other countries have a respect for authority that trumps respect for life. They can identify need and suffering and want it to stop, but they’d rather the authorities handle it.
One of the things I take pride in my fellow Americans for, especially after having travelled and lived abroad (the Netherlands), is that regardless of Republican vs. Democrat, Americans see suffering and say, “What can I do to help?” We differ on the methods, sometimes virulently. But rarely does that mean we’d rather take a hands off approach.
Trust me when I say, the “roll up our sleeves” attitude is almost entirely monopolozed by us, at least as far as I’ve noticed. Some countries have a little bit of it, some used to have a lot of it (the country that was formerly Great Britain comes to mind), but we have the lion’s share.
I’ve often wondered where our respect for human life comes from and why it’s so absent in other places. I’ve yet to come up with a good answer.
My prayers and my money, what I can spare, go to Haiti. And Scott Brown.
One difference between the Haitian Earthquake and Hurricane Katrina, the people of the gulf coast had a chance to get out of the way, the earth lifted up and dropped on the poor Haitians. Where would they go if they had a heads up? So no comparisons please. Danny Glover seems to think plate tectonics is intricately connected to so-called atmospheric phenomenons.
Don’t forget that other oft-maligned country that loves life more than anything else is also contributing a huge amount of aid. By the same token don’t expect the MSM or the UN to utter even a grunt of thanks.
The people carrying out the relief effort deserve all the praise they get and more and Haitians all help we can provide to get them through this.
But this is not going to result in any serious long term relief.
The US has undertaken longer run efforts in the Caribbean in the past. Maybe it’s time again. Now that our armed forces have so much experience in bringing new governments on line, maybe we can and should fix Haiti once and for all.
I can’t help but contrast the German reporting of the earthquake with that of the 2004 tsunami. Every report now mentions the help Obama is sending and what the military is doing. Five years ago, we were cheap, the American were mocked as having military response to everything, and there were no pictures of our people in action. There was one mention of the effectiveness of our aid in a 10PM news show about 6 weeks after the tsunami. It just shows how self-righteousness trumps discussions about how to help the people.
They still don’t like us. Obama will get all the credit.
Jim Sullivan: I think it has to do with our respect for the individual. We believe that we can do things as individuals that will matter. We believe that each individual is worth saving. We don’t write off “the masses.”
Neo:
You know, you just said it better than I could have. Because now that you say it, I look back at conversations with various foreigners, especially europeans, and our focus on individuals and indiviuality always perplexed them. The ‘insult’ I heard most often was ‘cowboy’, spoken like Alan Rickman with a phony german accent, and we all know what the word cowboy implies.
nyo,
I just read about Danny Glover’s comment. It reminds me that many of our countrymen give so much weight to the opinions of celebrities. Even when they ignore Twain’s quote and open their mouths, removing all doubt about their stupidity.
this might be kind of out of place here, but here goes. today at work i got a usual spam email from an organization that shall remain nameless, the text of which was hilarious. Basically the president of the thing was praising the efforts of none other than bill clinton and saying how we should all donate to the “clinton foundation” (did not make that up) so that bill clinton could go help haiti. we had a good laugh.
Right now we are dropping food, medicine and water without first establishing any kind of security or control.
The gangs are killing innocents for it and selling it right now!
Goddamnit! This is hopelessly incompetent and destructive!
We are actually contributing to strengthening the gangs’ control of the city and killing the innocent and wounded who cannot stake their claim in the chaos!
We should have started with small unit combat security operations and then started providing aid.
I don’t think anybody really gives a shit: they are too busy “making a difference” while the wrong people are getting killed and the usual bad guys are winning…..
Waiting to hear James Cameron say nasty things about the Marines and other US Armed Forces who have been sent to help, not to mention the aircraft carrier that just showed up with food, fresh water, and medical facilities.
The West is so rich that we have to make up fantastical problems like anthroprogenic global warming and vaccines causing autism to solve. Much of the rest of the world lives on the fringe, always on the edge of collapse.
And notice how successful the former colonies of England are vs. say, France, Spain, or the rest of the former Euro autocracies. It’s almost as if there is something to this capitalism/individual rights (specifically property rights)/democratic government thing.
Not that any of that is particularly helpful to the Haitians at the moment, I know.
The Germans, I heard today, have pledged all of $1.45 million in aid. The US? $100 million.
Yet the Euroweenies are the first to kick us in the slats and bitch that we aren’t doing enough. As they are, in fact, doing on another blog I frequent: posting snide comments about American “imperialism” (weird how we can be imperialist without a, you know, EMPIRE) and “neglect.”
I pointed out that, as always, we’ll be providing the lion’s share of the assistance (they, the mouse’s); they ignored me. Jerks.
I believe that the US should really send aid to earthquake-devastated Haiti because of its capability and capacity. Not just the US but every country who is able to help through their finances and logistics. The Haitians are in a pitiful state. Many more people are missing and those who are alive badly need food, water, medicine and shelter. This is why everyone is enjoined to pitch whatever they can offer. Let us not mind those who criticize us as long as we are doing our share.