Who wants to be regarded unfeeling and selfish? I won’t say it’s all a band-wagon effect, but there is a ton of stuff about aiding the Haitians on blogs and news sites. I will say far, far too many of them are self-serving, but when you deal mainly in public notice of things, it’s part of the baggage you bear. So the best we can hope for is something honest and fitting in how they cover the story.
The whole thing is one mixed bag of truly insane behavior. First, we have this Western obsession with extending help from the ivory tower. We want to do good things for the people, but we don’t want to actually have to experience part of their misery. “I need to keep my Mercedes for a run to the first class meals offered only to us aid workers.” I don’t get that at all. You can’t lift the fallen if you don’t get down next to them where they have fallen. At a minimum, your feet and hands will get dirty.
Second, look at how other nations handle similar emergencies, and how they recover… or don’t. Can we examine the results with an eye to underlying conditions, and come up with a workable explanation of how it ought to be done? I don’t have room to write a long dissertation on it, but I agree loudly with those who remind readers we are going about this all wrong. What is going on with foreign aid in Haiti right now is just more of what has been going on there for several generations.
There have been all sorts of aid agencies there for quite some time. I keep running across the number 10,000 in reports. That’s one for every 1000 residents of Haiti (10 million). It’s a veritable sink hole. Yet, on the other hand, the God of Heaven says you had better care, so don’t act like we can’t get involved. But obviously in our zeal — the US alone has given something like $30 per Haitian in the past year — we have failed the mission. But the aid establishment is deeply entrenched, and I would say precious little is actually making life better in the long run. It’s not as if nothing grows there, nor is the issue purely one of population pressure, though we note Haiti’s population has tripled during my lifetime, while the world’s population as a whole merely doubled. If whatever it was which encouraged having babies went away, so would having babies.
But you won’t find any simple formula for that, either. Mission work? Most of the people claim Christian faith, something like 80%. Just because Voodoo is an officially recognized religion doesn’t make Haiti any less civilized than Americans, who often recognize Jedi (from a movie, for goodness sake) as a valid religion. No, the problem is we have never allowed Haiti to leave the plantation. We keep sending troops every time things don’t go like we want, and we force them to accept a communist thug as their ruler, a guy by the name of Aristide. Just as here, popular vote means nothing, given election processes with rigged voting, manipulation and bribes are so common. So instead of real aid by genuine disaster recover experts, we send in the Marines!
Jarheads are fine people, for the most part, and will work hard at what they can understand is the mission. But because it’s the easiest group we can assemble and move quickly, it shows we haven’t planned very well for such things in the first place. So the best we can do is going to look about like the aftermath of Katrina. Massive organizations with massive budgets do not automatically result in good assistance. Here in the US, it almost guarantees a disaster will be made worse. That’s because nothing — nothing — in our system of government is ready to do good or right. We could teach the Haitians a thing or two about banana republic corruption. The only bright spot in this whole fiasco is the Marines are less likely to complain and whine about conditions they way the UN folks do.
How come we don’t have an industrious Haiti simply seeking temporary assistance? Why is it such a mess we just brush aside their government and do what we want? It’s because we have been doing that for so long, it’s just our customary response. Everything we do in that country is carefully calibrated to prevent any change in the situation. We need Haiti to be pitiful, because it allows us to cover up so very many sins. I can’t pretend to calculate numbers on this, but the vast majority of what you will see and hear about efforts to relieve their suffering is pure grandstanding, propaganda, a way of diverting attention from gross and unconscionable sins here at home, or in other places from which some pittance of aid is sent.
You want to solve Haiti’s problems? Leave them alone. Not just in their suffering, but in their relative good times — leave them be. Let them fight it out amongst themselves what they will be and what they will do. As long as we keep them as a plantation of children and slaves, we will always have this pitiful disaster in the Caribbean backroom to trot out when we need a diversion.
Private aid is another matter entirely. Any time any organization with the least little tie to any human government anywhere gets involved, the process is property of Satan already. Get the governments out of it. Governments are not simply unable to do good; they refuse to do good. None — not a one — will do what’s right or even harmless. This is not what governments are supposed to do, and they should never, ever try. Don’t you dare call for governments to do anything about this. For those who give, you had better check carefully the agency you trust with that money. Red Cross? Forget it; they consume more than they pass along, never you mind the official lying numbers. No, look for someone who was there before, some private group who is still there, hasn’t fled the scene of chaos, but lives right there with the people. Of, something like Doctors Without Borders, or other organizations which have actually earned respect by their record of conduct and accountability. Not a single government on this earth has such a record.
