The Tsunami And George W. Bush
By Vincent Fiore (01/04/05)
Have you heard the news? America, under the leadership of George W. Bush, has managed to raise the very oceans against humanity--unintended of course--as a direct result of Americas’ failure to recognize the hazards of capitalism and the driving of it--via their millions of SUV’s.
What has happened in Asia, in places like Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka, is for many unimaginable in its scope of chaos and death. As of this writing, the human tragedy stands at 150,000 and counting. The tsunamis seemed to sweep the lands bare of life, while mankind could only look on in awestruck horror at the terrifying and omnipotent power of nature.
Yet, our environmentalist friends on the left have chosen to forward the charge that the earthquakes and the tsunami that followed were the work of global warming, created by the uncaring masses of Western humanity.
One wonders: If Bush had the power the rule the air and sea through otherwise natural disasters, couldn’t he have sent a disaster or two to smite the Mullahs in Iran and that annoying little megalomaniac in North Korea? Well, time will tell.
Tragically, the death of tens of thousands in Asia has been used as a political cudgel to once again go after the Bush White House. Aside from the global warming charges, other charges have been leveled--and summarily dismissed--by clear thinkers as political opportunism.
Just hours after the United States gave an “initial” 15 million dollars in direct aid to the tsunami victims, and their governments, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland lamented what he perceives to be the affliction of a modernist society:
“We were more generous when we were less rich. And it is beyond me why we are so stingy, really.”
Really, Mr. Egeland? Did you run this by your boss, Kofi Annan, before you erupted in righteous wrath, or couldn’t he be reached in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Christmas holiday?
The editorial room at the New York Times made sure to castigate Bush for not having, in their opinion, “roused” himself quickly enough from Crawford, Texas for their likes. But not a word about Annan, who perhaps, getting a whiff of an impending political stench, decided to cut short his holiday and return to New York, three days after the devastation in Asia.
Since that “measly aid offer of 15 million,” from Bush, he has increased monetary aid ten-fold. He has dispatched the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier and its twenty ship battle group to Sumatra’s northwest coast. Bush ordered nine C-130 transport aircraft from Utapao air base in Thailand to deliver medical supplies to Sri Lanka and Indonesia. It is the largest humanitarian effort since 1991, when Bangladesh was battered by cyclones, leaving 150,000 dead.
Beside these aforementioned miserly aid efforts, Bush also formed a coalition with Japan, India, and Australia to coordinate the relief effort. But hell hath no fury like that of the fan-dance crowd of the United Nations, who once again took umbrage with an American president for having the sense to follow his better judgment. Former U.N. Development Secretary Clare Short wasted little time in joining the politically unstable crowd that cannot seem to remember that this effort is about helping people, not George W. Bush:
“I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up.”
Not satisfied at having kicked a little U.S. ass with her words, Ms. Short decides to play the part of the noun with these words:
“It is the only body (the U.N.) that has the moral authority. But it can only do it well if it is backed up by the authority of the great powers.”
Is Clare Short talking about the “moral authority” that this same United Nations so honorably displayed during the U.N. sanctioned oil-for-food program that managed to look the other way while Saddam Hussein amassed some 25 billion dollars; some of which might be in the hands of terrorist in Iraq that are killing U.S. soldiers?
Someone needs to tell Clare Short that the “moral authority” she speaks of is better left for the overseeing of elections and developmental aid projects. Bush and others like him have their priorities right. They are about the business of saving lives.
The people of South Asia have suffered greatly, and will continue to suffer for some time. It is time for the world to mobilize with the best it can offer for these people, and it has. As far as America’s generosity is concerned, at least as it is of “concern” for some in the world, they need not be. I assure you, as history has shown, America will lead the way through both governmental and private charitable giving. When all is said and done, the money freely given to those most in need will reach billions of dollars.
As for the critics and the political obsessionist’s who continue to peg all that is ill with the world at the feet of Bush, they may want to heed the words of another great American cowboy, Will Rogers:
“The American people are very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity.”
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