I hear this all the time and don’t have the slightest idea if it’s easily proved or disproven… any cites out there one way or the other?
Here ya go:
Japan donates $120,000 in relief supplies to Alabama
And remember Japan is still coping with the aftermath of a much larger disaster themselves making the donation even more generous.
ETA: Here is a list of aid sent to the US from other countries after hurricane Katrina. Hell, even the country of Djibouti offered money.
I imagine we don’t really need much foreign help, but we have.gotten some. During Katrina, someone have us a huge machine (generator?) for user in a refinery. It was flown in on a Russian AN-225 because that’s the only plane big enough to carry it. Of course, we may have paid for it, I don’t know. The French gave assisstance during Katrina from navy ships in the Carribean as well.
During Katrina, Mexico even had “boots on the ground”.
I thought what chided people the most about Bush’s response to Katrina was that so many countries donated so much yet his administration dropped the ball.
Cuba offered aid after Katrina.
I think Canada may occasionally offer assistance to the US as well…
I’ve recently come across a rather bizarre discussion on Facebook that was similar to this, stating the the US did not receive (or even need!) any aid whatsoever in the wake of 9/11 because the country was rich enough to pay for everything itself and took care of everything without help. I didn’t wade into the discussion then, because it was happening between friends-of-friends that I don’t know, but damn…the level of disparaging remarks about other countries was disturbing, nevermind the fact that they were simply incorrect in their assertions.
The Canadian Red Cross and several financial institutions collected donations from Canadians, earmarked for assistance to Americans whose[flights were diverted in Canada,](http://www.navcanada.ca/NavCanada.asp?Language=EN&Content=contentdefinitionfiles
ewsroom\backgrounders\911crisis.xml) as well as to relief efforts in the USA. They sent 100+ people from their Disaster Relief Team to New York to assist the American Red Cross. Blood donations shot up, though I don’t know if any Canadian supplies were needed in the US in the long run.
Aid comes in many forms; not just money.
There was also a lot of international cooperation in the Gulf oil spill cleanup.
Australia regularly sends teams of firefighters to California (and vice versa).
For that matter, San Diego County leases two CL-415 (Bombardier water bombers/SuperScoopers) from Québec from September through to December. Since it’s a lease, it isn’t really aid, but those planes sure are useful! Clearly it’s a better deal to lease from a Canadian province than it is to buy their own (and really, Québec doesn’t have nearly the same wildfire problem as California…or even the west of Canada, where the CL-415s are often deployed the rest of the year).
The United States are a powerful, independent and rich country (even in light of the current economic crisis) but it’s insular and ignorant to think that they can do anything and everything on their own. The world just doesn’t work that way.
Well, it received at least £10 after Katrina, because I remember giving it.
I think we’ve had many examples of some aid going into the country. But surely the point is, is it true that developed, comparatively well off “first-world” nations normally have sufficient emergency funds of their own put aside they don’t need wide-scale external disaster relief, even though they normally receive SOME help? I assume so.
The question about the meme, to me, is, would you EXPECT as much emergency aid to flow from Haiti to the USA as from the USA to Haiti? And if not, if the US fortuitously has sufficient resources to recover from a natural disaster, is one’s logical response then “Oh, well, screw Haiti then, if their parents generation’s government didn’t have the foresight and ability to build a first-world economy and have sufficient disaster funds squirrelled away for emergencies, then fuck them, just let them all die?”
My response to the meme is not “not true” but “um, hardly surprising, what’s the big deal?”
Here’s a thread from katrina days, about the aid from Canada, which included 4 naval vessels: Canada sends navy ships to New Orleans. The news article I linked to is still available, for more details.
ETA: and the link inpost 48 about aid from Mexico is still alive as well
I remember being in grade school and doing a project on foreign aid. I was surprised that the US was helped out in the past a lot. For instance, during the San Francisco Earthquake in the early 1900s, we got foreign help.
After 9/11, article 5 of Nato’s charter was invoked for the first time: an attack on one member was considered an attack on all. Foreign funds and blood aided the US’s subsequent effort in Afghanistan.
More generally, as a share of GDP, US foreign assistance is less generous than that of the average OECD member. Private charitable donations don’t come close to filling that gap.
We may not get much relief aid, but we get half the world slaving away in sweatshops to build our gadgets/sneakers/knicknacks so it’s probably a fair trade.