Posted on 01/08/2005 5:09:17 PM PST by UnklGene
Tsunami? Blame America -
By MARK STEYN
Humanitarian honchos and Euro-libs denounce Washington's response to the Asia disaster
A week ago, people kept asking me for my opinion of the tsunami, and to be honest I didn't have one. It didn't seem the kind of thing to have an "opinion" on, even for an opinion columnist - not like who should win the election or whether we should have toppled Saddam. It was obviously a catastrophe, and it was certain the death toll would rise and keep rising, and other than that there didn't seem a lot to opine about.
I've never subscribed to the late British prime minister Harold Macmillan's tediously over-venerated bit of political wisdom as to what he feared most: "Events, dear boy, events."
Most "events" - even acts of God - come, to one degree or another, politically predetermined: Almost exactly a year before the tsunamis, there were two earthquakes - one measuring 6.5 in California, one of 6.3 in Iran. The Californian quake killed two people and did little physical damage. The Iranian one killed 40,000 and reduced an entire city to rubble - not just the glories of ancient Persia, but all the schools and hospitals from the Seventies and Eighties.
The event in itself wasn't devastating; the conditions on the ground made it so. That said, a sudden unprecedented surge by the Indian Ocean is as near to a pure "event" as one can get, and it seemed churlish to huff afterwards about why the governments of Somalia or the Maldives hadn't made a tsunami warning system one of their budgetary priorities.
But the waters recede and the familiar contours of the political landscape re-emerge - in this case, the need to fit everything to the Great Universal Theory of the age, that whatever happens the real issue is the rottenness of America.
Jan Egeland, the Norwegian bureaucrat who's the big humanitarian honcho at the UN, got the ball rolling with some remarks about the "stinginess" of certain wealthy nations. And former British international development secretary Clare Short piled on, and then the global media chipped in: The Guardian's Polly Toynbee reminded readers that "'Charity begins at home' is the mean-minded dictum of the Right."
But even in the supposedly conservative Daily Telegraph, reader Robert Eddison dismissed the "paltry $15 million from Washington" as "worse than stingy - The offer - since shamefacedly upped to $35 million - equates to what? Three oil tycoons' combined annual salary."
Eddison concluded with a stirring plea to the wicked Americans to mend their ways: "If Washington is to lay any claim to the moral, as distinct from the military, high ground, let it emulate Ireland and Norway's prompt and proportionate attempts to plug South-East Asia's gaping gap of need and help avert a further 80,000 deaths from infection and untreated wounds."
IF AMERICA were to emulate Ireland and Norway, there'd be a lot more dead Indonesians and Sri Lankans. Eddison may not have noticed, but the actual relief effort going on right now is being done by the Yanks: it's the USAF and a couple of diverted naval groups shuttling in food and medicine, with solid help from the Aussies, Singapore, and a couple of others. The Irish can't fly in relief supplies because they don't have any C-130s. All they can do is wait for the UN to swing by and pick up their check.
The Americans send the UN the occasional remittance, too. In fact, 40% of Jan Egeland's budget and 60% of all global food aid comes from Washington, which suggests the Europeans aren't being quite as "proportionate" as they like to boast.
But, when disaster strikes, what matters is not whether your check is "prompt" but whether you are. For all the money lavished on them, the UN is hard to rouse to action. Egeland's full-time round-the-clock 24/7 Big Humanitarians are conspicuous by their all but total absence on the ground.
In fact, they're doing exactly what that Daily Telegraph reader accused Washington of doing - Colin Powell, wrote Eddison, "is like a surgeon saying he must do a bandage count before he will be in a position to staunch the blood flow of a hemorrhaging patient."
That's the sclerotic UN bureaucracy. They've flown in (or nearby, or overhead) a couple of experts to assess the situation and they've issued press releases boasting about the assessments. In Sri Lanka, Egeland's staff informs us, "UNFPA is carrying out reproductive health assessments."
One of the heartening aspects of the situation is how easy it is to make a difference. By the weekend, the Australians had managed not just to restore the water supply in Aceh but to improve it. Even before the tsunami, most residents of the city boiled their water. But 10 army engineers from Darwin have managed to crack open the main lines and hook them up to a mobile filtration unit. This is nothing to do with Egeland and his office or how big a check the Norwegians sent.
Indeed, the effectiveness of these efforts seems to be what Clare Short finds so objectionable. Washington's announcement that it would be coordinating its disaster relief with Australia, India, and Japan smacked too much of another coalition of the willing. "I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN," she told the BBC. "Only really the UN can do that job. It is the only body that has the moral authority."
I DIDN'T catch the interview, but I'm assuming that, the Oil-for-Fraud program and the Child-Sex-for-Food program notwithstanding, Short managed to utter that last sentence with a straight face. But, if you're a homeless Sri Lankan, what matters is not who has the moral authority but who has the water tankers and medical helicopters.
President Bush didn't even bother mentioning the UN in his statement. Kofi Annan, by contrast, has decided that the Aussie-American coalition of the willing is, in fact, a UN operation whether they know it or not. "The core group will support the United Nations effort," he said. "That group will be in support of the efforts that the United Nations is leading."
So American personnel in American planes and American ships will deliver American food and American medicine and implement an American relief plan, but it's still a "UN-led effort."
That seems to be enough for Kofi. His "moral authority" is intact, and the European media can still bash the Yanks for their stinginess. Everybody's happy.
The writer is senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group.
Northridge quake (LA 1994) was magnitude 6.7. Resulted in 51 deaths. In my book the valley counts as high population density.
No reason to gloat, but your own post requires the "Midwestern city to have limited seismic upgrades" - is not the whole point of "superior american construction techniques" include preparing for seismic activity in active seismic zones?
No desire to start a thread on seismic analytics - but I think the original comment was much more intended as "stuff happens, and when your number comes up it comes up".
Again - no reason to gloat, but no reason to build a straw man either.
Diva's Husband
If only it were no worse than "worthless"!
The Northridge quake was directly under a HUGE-sized city - the Valley has a population of over 1 million, and the Northridge earthquake had impacts as far as Hollywood and Santa Monica.
I think it says a lot for our building codes that it killed only 51 people. Not that this is not a tragedy, but it's not an enormous scale tragedy like the Iran quake, which in fact was a bit smaller than Northridge.
Steyn is right.
When I bought my house, Property JD, this firm you pay $100 to for various reports that confirm mostly what you already knew, told me that my property was not in a Tsunami Inundation Zone. At the time I laughed and wished it WAS, because then it would be in Malibu on the beach.
I don't think Malibu construction techniques would stand up to what the Asians faced, though, and Steyn conceded that point later in the article. In the paragraph we're talking about, he points out that most of the time, not all, natural disasters can be mitigated by better planning.
Just not this particular time.
D
Agreed. It does a LOT of damage!
"So American personnel in American planes and American ships will deliver American food and American medicine and implement an American relief plan, but it's still a "UN-led effort."
That seems to be enough for Kofi. His "moral authority" is intact, and the European media can still bash the Yanks for their stinginess. Everybody's happy."
UNgrateful UNbearable UNjustified
As usual, Mark Steyn shows his brilliance. Thanks for the ping!
How much "moral authority" does it take to say, "Here's some food and some water. Hand on a minute while I rebuild your house?"
In this article, Steyn was more gentle in his criticism of the UN than usual. And he still makes it look pathetic.
WorldNetDaily provided a link to a diplomatic blogsite which, in no uncertain terms, made it clear that the UN has been totally useless in the effort so far.
It ALSO made clear that Annan is a liar--his announcement that "UN operations are underway" early in January was flat-out untrue.
The UN has a number of observers here and there (not in the seriously affected areas.) That's it. No more.
Bookmark for later printing.
I honestly believe old Quid would excerpt his own vanity post. ;^)
Do you have a link regarding the massive boycott claim? I am genuinely interested!!
I agree!
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