I replied that our contribution was the largest of all contributing nations, and that we even increased the pledge tenfold from $35 million to $350 million.
She agreed, but reminded me that "per capita, we're not the biggest contributors when compared to the Europeans". I replied that might be relevant if America didn't have more Irish than Ireland and more Germans than Germany. We've got more Scots than Scotland, and the list goes on and on. Besides, if the several dozen citizens of the wealthy little kingdom state of Liechtenstein each sacrificed a gold bracelet to the relief efforts, was she saying that would make Liechtenstein the world's most generous nation although it wouldn't make much difference in the grand scale of the relief effort?
Okay, she reluctantly agreed with that point too, and then I asked her whose aid would actually get to the victims first; America's, the United Nations', or the EU's?
Fast forward to video of US Marine CH-53 Sea Stallions, Sea Knights, and Seahawk choppers delivering at from offshore US Navy Maritime Naval Prepositioning ships. Who's got amphibious forces that can deliver the goods at a moment's notice anywhere in the world and essentially set up a small city anywhere we want? The United States, or Finland? Where's Kofi Annan's naval rapid reaction force, and can he captain them from the ski slopes in Jackson Hole, Wyoming?
I mentioned that at this very moment, we're assisting in several nations. We'll have for them generators, water purification, graves detail, agricultural development, emergency care services, innoculation from disease, and other rebuilding and lifesaving measures. All of this from a military that was so recently accused of being 'stretched too thin'.
You'll know when the EU/UN arrives on the scene when the column of ponytailed hippie ladies that look like Jane Goodall arrive on fancy passenger jets bearing backpacks of tofu sandwiches and carrying sacks of 'cruelty-free' rice.
... And by the way, isn't it interesting how although there are just nearly as many people dead on the shorelines of the tsunami-afflicted nations as there are bodies we've counted in Saddam's mass graves, the world instead bemoans the body count from a thoroughly unavoidable natural disaster and refuses to acknowledge the victims of an entirely preventable inhumanity caused by a mad dictator that much of the world was against us overthrowing?
At this point, my wife yanked me offstage like a dying Vaudeville comic getting the hook, much to everyone's relief.
The moral of this story is to never make any statement that can be even slightly construed to be America-bashing in the vicinity of where The KG9 Kid has been drinkin'.
LOL! You tell 'em!
I saw an interview w/one anquished man who cried out, "We need help. Where are the Americans?"
Not 'Where is the UN?' Not even where is his own government, but "Where are the Americans?" They know who they can count on.
well done. LOL.
She is dead wrong.
LOL!! Good for you!
I got into a discussion with some folks, at a party just after Christmas, about the President's plans for reform of Social Security. One of the guys laughed and said to me, "He's your guy, isn't he?". I said "You're dang right he is!"
A couple of them said that they weren't sure the privatization was a good idea, and I asked them if they had put away any money for retirement BESIDES their Social Security, so that they wouldn't have to have a subsistence income like so many old folks have now. When they said they had, I asked if they wouldn't prefer it had come from their 'before tax' money rather than their 'after tax' money. I also asked if they were interested in their kids having any Social Security AT ALL when it came time for them to retire. Most of them were nodding in agreement before it was done.
Well,to be honest,Indian military aid & transportation was the first to reach Sri Lanka & the Maldives & Aussie aid reached Indonesia.But none of them come near the heavy duty capability of the USN.