My [Aid] Package is Bigger than Yours

I didn't want to lead off the blog with such an overt political post, but this won't be relevant for long, so I want to get it off my chest. Some people seem to be in a pissing contest over whose socioeconomic system is better at sending aid (or an appropriate amount of aid) to disaster-stricken people across the world. There are 2 basic camps forming: 1. America is stingy and evil and hypocritical, you neocon bastards, and 2. America gives enough therefore we kick ass therefore you should shut your hippie face.

Pardon the realist in me but can we stop the goddamn partisan sniping on this issue long enough to actually form a coherent plan on how to deal with the tsunami damage? Six months down the road we can examine what went wrong and where the deficits appeared and what positive gains were made. Until then, can we PLEASE all just agree that sending food, medicine and money to people who just saw their families towed out to sea is a POSITIVE THING? And that we should do more of it whenever possible because it is the RIGHT THING TO DO?

The defensive mode of "I gave at the office" attitude that the President and Powell like to trumpet does no one any good. Nor does the uncharacteristic lack of symbolic leadership in our President's response. I'm sorry, but when the president can't find the time to get off the ranch when the biggest natural disaster of the century comes calling, that really highlights a moral deficit that we don't need to be shining bright lights on right now. We dropped $15 billion in pork onto the airline industry after 9/11 and we can't pony up a tenth of that to ease the suffering of half a million people? These are honest critiques of our priorities and I think we need to examine them at length in the coming year.

By the same token - liberal humanitarians need to tone down the armchair-general rhetoric. Yes, we need to seriously consider sending more aid, but screaming that to the heavens before the aid agencies even know what logistics they'll be dealing with is stupid and hurtful. Give the system time to respond and judge the response based on need and results. The total world tally is up to 2 billion right now. If they need more, we'll deal with it. If not, good job, nations of Earth!

That said, The Red Cross is my favorite charity, with Doctors Without Borders a close second.

Redesign and official launch of the blog should be up by the end of the week.