U.S. aircraft carriers and helicopters are hard at the task of trying to save lives in south Asia, having determined that waiting for "coordination" with the United Nations bureaucrats might be somewhat counter-productive, not to mention deadly. I'm sure that in reality, we are in consultation with the U.N. folks. It's just our refusal to let them "process" all the money that drives certain internationalists batty.
Serial America-basher Clare Short, a former something-or-other in Britain said the other day that "Only really the UN can do that job...It is the only body that has the moral authority". Right.
What the U.N can do is try to take credit for work undertaken by USAID, along with Australian aid workers and military, according to this post at Diplomad (via Power Line):
Well, we're heading into Day 7 of the Asian quake/tsunami crisis. And the UN relief effort? Nowhere to be seen except at some meetings and on CNN and BBC as talking heads. In this corner of the Far Abroad, it's Yanks and Aussies doing the hard, sweaty work of saving lives.Check out this interview (on the UN's official website) with SecGen Annan and Under SecGen Egeland shows,
Mr. Egeland: Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh....In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving...Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an "air-freight handling centre" in Aceh.Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers - 90 of them - which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.
I provided this to some USAID colleagues working in Indonesia and their heads nearly exploded. The first paragraph is quite simply a lie. The UN is taking credit for things that hard-working, street savvy USAID folks have done. It was USAID working with their amazing network of local contacts who scrounged up trucks, drivers, and fuel; organized the convoy and sent it off to deliver critical supplies. A UN "air-freight handling centre" in Aceh? Bull! It's the Aussies and the Yanks who are running the air ops into Aceh. We have people working and sleeping on the tarmac in Aceh, surrounded by bugs, mud, stench and death, who every day bring in the US and Aussie C-130s and the US choppers; unload, load, send them off. We have no fancy aid workers' retreat -- notice the priorities of the UN? People are dying and what's the first thing the UN wants to do? Set up "a camp for relief workers" one that would be "fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything."
The UN is a sham.
Chuck Simmins is tracking the stinginess of Americans on his site. As of this writing, private sector donations (personal and corporate) are over $200 million, according to Simmins' tally, and the latest commitment of taxpayer dollars by the Bush administration is some $350 million. Of course, both totals are going nowhere but up.
Tim Blair has lots of good info on relief efforts as well, and Belmont Club comments with "Swine Before Pearls" on the logical extensions of deference to U.N. bureaucrats:
Leaving the issues of moral authority aside, the operational question is whether the world is better and more efficiently served by the UN organizational model. The real thought experiment that proponents of UN legitimacy must pass is whether they would entrust Paris, not just Kigali to the bureaucrats on the East River. Clare Short is probably perfectly happy to entrust Rwandan lives to the United Nations; whether she would entrust her own to it is another question.
So while the U.N. posts press releases and convenes international conferences in Geneva, thank God America and Australia and other good people are willing to do what the U.N. can't or won't. Act to save lives now. Worry about who gets the credit for being the most multilateral and cooperative later. Thanks to all who are a part of this effort, Americans and non-Americans alike, and to all who donate to the cause.
Posted by dan at January 1, 2005 11:29 PM