Utter Despair (Will America pay a price for not donating enough?)

Great Debates
1

A conversation I heard on CNN a few days ago is working around my head and the results are rather bad.

The speakers thesis was the following: America does not just have an opportunity to step up and be the leading society in helping the recovery in Southeast Asia. It has to look ahead a generation. India is the largest Muslim country on the planet. A lack of full and deep care will foment such profound loss, such ill and ill will that the entire part of the planet will be ripe for the picking, so to speak.

The picking already exists, in the form of Fundamentalist Muslims. Look at history, which always repeats itself. We learn nothing from the past. I despair our future. Not as a nation but as a planet. Sadly, we possess the tools to demolish ourselves very efficiently.

Because of how our nation is working these days, we will not step up. We will not press to do everything we can for weeks and months and years to help. We will make a splash, sell coffee and give a few dollars to “help”, and stand by feeling we’ve been really good citizens while our government tosses out a lifeline, helps those able to grab on now…and, ( I fear ) drops the lifeline in a year or less.

Jihad. What a word. Try Rome, owning the middle east in the year 50 B.C.E. Try the Crusades. Try the Middle Ages. Try 1920’s Germany. Religion is so sadly used as a battering ram and rallying cry. Both seem to be to be abuses of what religion is.

My humble opinion is that the planet teeters on the brink, more delicately than we have in decades. Hubris took the election, hubris (mis)guides national choices and hubris will make us turn out back on a half million people in dire need.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Someone will step in, and offer those who suffer the concept of relief.

It is inhumane to ignore the suffering of so many, when we live- by comparison- in such bounty. And yet in the long term I very much fear we will ignore.

The speaker in that CNN report said that the next generation, and the one after that, will pay the price of short-term greed and selfishness in the face of global needs. The day after I heard this on the radio, India announced that it is refusing outside aid in rebuilding and protecting its citizens. This is ominous, IMHO.

I despair the scenario I heard, for I very much fear that this speaker is terribly on target.

Cartooniverse

2

Interesting, if somewhat factually innacurate. The fact is that we ARE leading relief efforts in those countries and have already offered more than $300 MM in aide. The biggest problem right now is not that there aren’t enough supplies or aide but that it can’t reach where it needs to go because all the roads were destroyed.

FYI, India has the third largest Muslim population in the world after Indonisia and Pakistan. Interestinly it’s only 12% of the total population compared to around 90% for the other two. I’m sure this fact is not lost on the current administration.

3

Yipes. I meant to write Indonesia as being 90% Muslim. And yeah, I Previewed too.

As for the aid, you can read $ 300M but to be blunt, that number is a complete sham. I live in New York City.

Ask me what our President promised in real cash aid, direct cash aid to help re-build lower Manhattan and NYC after the September 11th attack. Now ask me what he’s come through with, opposed to blocking the deliver of in the months and years post-attack.

And, not for nothing, but the 300M is a total insult. It's a meaningless drop in the bucket. The Pentagon is blowing more than that **per unit** on a new plane just debuted that's the ultimate jet fighter. Saw it on the teevee the other day. Price tag per unit? 500M.

Ahem. We can plan to kill, or we can plan to save. We can pay for the situation now, or we can pay for the situation later.

4

The U.S. government has already pledged $350 mil. The private citizens of the United States will add that much or more.

In this little piss-ant town I live in, population 3000, a local band did a benefit for relief aid Saturday on the courthouse lawn. They collected over $9,000 for the International Red Cross.

Why do our government and our citizens do this? For the political capital, like you suggest? NO!!! We do it because we can afford to, and it’s the right thing to do.

Forty years of passing out millions of sacks of wheat with: “Donated by the People of the United States” printed on them, all the assistance we have provided to Asia and the Middle East in agriculture and aquaculture through the USAID (Agency For International Development) programs, and all the other foreign aid programs through which we’ve sent billions didn’t keep fanatics from crashing planes into the World Trade Center.

“Leading the World” in tsunami aid won’t keep the next generation from doing something similar. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t buy friendship.

But we don’t really expect our donations to buy friendship. We’re donating because it’s the right thing to do.

5

Why do you connect these two things?
As I understand it, the fanatics violently oppose US bases in Saudi Arabia. It’s nothing to do with foreign aid.

It is indeed the right thing to do. However generous gestures can easily be outweighed by other actions (Guantanamo Bay, spending billions to occupy Iraq over WMD’s).

6

I connect these two things because the OP’s point, as I understand it, is that if we gave more we would win the friendship of the people in that part of the world.

I think we should, and will, give more because we want to help out people who are in a tough situation.

It’s doubtful if the help will be long remembered, but that should be, and is, a secondary concern. It’s not about acquiring political advantage, it’s about helping folks that are in trouble.

7

I agree with this.

However I am sure both the appalling terrorism and the military actions of the US are independent of foreign aid actions.

8

Interesting that people are all for GIVING millions, if not billions, of dollars in aide to countries, but when jobs move out of America to those very same countries people get mad that they are “ruining” our economy.

9

Why ominous? Since you’ve just corrected yourself about Indonesia, you should realise too that India is a relatively rich (albeit with some serious distribution issues) majority Hindu country that feels it already has the resources it needs to cope with the disaster, and is indeed helping out in Sri Lanka too. Where’s the ominousness?

Looking at the $350 million, we shouldn’t neglect a) private contributions, and b) the military and peace corps work, which will also cost a fortune, neither of which are included in the figure. The US is being generous indeed, IMO, and though public compassion may wane in months to come, I’m pretty confident that the US will remain helping, either directly, or via NGOs, for years to come.

10

First of all, trying to turn my OP into an anti-America sentiment is a waste of time. I am decrying the shortsightedness and niggardly attitudes of the political machien that is currently running the boat, not denigrading the good efforts of individuals. To imply that I am is to twist my words to suit your agenda. Don’t.
Now then. Once again. We are being shortsighed and I fear in the next 5-20 years we will pay a terrible price for how we are handling this situation. As for what the political leaders are doing, well… they are serving their own needs most artfully.

11

Excuse me! I thought you wanted some discussion of the long term political effects of providing different levels of aid to the victims.

If I’d known all you wanted was another of the tiresome “Bush Rapes Babies” threads I wouldn’t have bothered reading it or responding to it.

12

This is IMHO. If you want to accuse me of hinting at, or actually using that kind of vicious inflammatory obscene language, I suggest you chose the proper forum.

I voiced an opionion. One that I feel strongly about. I did not say, hint or intimate that the President of the United States is a rapist.

You owe me a public apology.

Cartooniverse

13

John Carter of Mars didn’t accuse you of saying that, he was referring to a type of thread.
:rolleyes: [sup]Rightly, too![/sup]

14

What kniz said.

15

Moving this thread from IMHO to Great Debates.

16

[Moderator Hat ON]

Edited thread title for clarity.

[Moderator Hat OFF]

17

The people who hate us will hate us no matter what we give. Hell, we could buy every one of them a gold plated Rolls Royce, and they would use it to try and run us over. The terrorists are motivated by ideology. We’re not going to bribe them with foreign aid into believing another ideology. Even if our aid was somehow inadequate (which I do not believe it is), it would not affect how these people view us. We’re the great Satan to them because we like Jews. As long as we keep being friendly with Israel they’ll keep hating us, no matter how much aid we give them.

18

True that, renob but there’s more to it. The US has led the way for years regarding foreign aid, both the government and private citizens of the United States are among the most generous in the entire world, because we can afford to be, and because it’s the right thing to do. Still, this garners us no quarter with the Islamic Fundies. Nor does it improve the memories of European countries, including and especially France (remember that little Nazi debacle a few years back, hmm?). Not that the US is faultless or innocent, no, hardly the truth, but I think we’ve gone under recognized for our superlative efforts, and I don’t think donations of any kind or amount would sway the hearts of those so convinced that we’re anything else than the great satan they think we are.

19

I would like to know of any instance where retribution was directed at a country for insufficient aid to other countries. From where I sit, the whole argument makes no sense. It is spinning yet another “things for Americans to be frightened about” yarn out of thin air.

20

You’re asking for prescience- not at all the intent of my OP. Try this on for size.

September 9th, 2001: " Oh stop it. Name the last terrorist attack on US soil. How ludicrious to suggest a huge planned attack."

September 13th, 2001: " Oh. "

See the point? My OP despairs not the good intentions of normal folk, but the government’s desire to cut corners in the face of the full force of need and the shortsightedness of our leaders in responding to the disaster.

Fine. Fact of the day. Australia is sending 850 million in aid. The USA is sending ( as of this morning ) 350 million in aid. Money talks. We’re screaming at the world with our selfishness. THAT was the point of my O.P. Our nation may well pay in future generations for the decisions being made this month.

I posted this into IMHO because it was my opinion. Many Dopers post into IMHO every day with their opinions. That’s why that Forum has that name. There is no Great Debate to be had, for I have zero need to force a debate that demands that I- or any Doper- produce facts for events in the future. That’s lunacy, not debating.

For the record, I did not chose to have this thread moved and feel it is entirely inappropriate for Great Debates. If I felt the need to debate the donations being made by the United States trust me. I’d have posted in here.

Moderators are requestied to lock this thread, since as the OP’er I feel that there is no debate in my OP.

Cartooniverse