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January 04, 2005

Steyn On Tsunami Political Exploitation

Mark Steyn observes that it did not take long, but for a couple of hours of stunned silence, for the usual suspects to lay attack on the United States in the aftermath of the tsunami catastrophe:

...you would think an unprecedented tsunami in a region that has never been a U.S. sphere of influence would be hard to pin on the Great Satan. And, to be fair to the global rent-a-quote crowd, for an hour or two they were stunned into silence. But it wasn't long before they were back singing the same old song: Disaffected young Muslim men in Saudi Arabia, devastated coastal villages in Sri Lanka ... "These Foolish Things Remind Me Of U.S.A." You really need Cole Porter:

You're The Pits
With your massive armies
You're The Pits
And you cause tsunamis.

Jan Egeland, that Norwegian bloke who is the U.N. humanitarian honcho, got the ball rolling with a few general remarks about big countries' "stinginess." He particularly thinks U.S. tax rates too low. Got that? Those tightwad Yanks aren't doing enough.

Despite our tax rates being too low for Mr. Egeland, we are doing more to help those who were impacted by the disaster than any of Mr. Egeland's crowd could ever hope to achieve.

And no, David Ignatius, George W. Bush did not initially "blow it" as you would like to believe. A mobilization to help with a disaster of this magnitude takes time - not "I feel your pain" with pursed lips for the cameras.

More on action vs. talk here.

Posted at 10:22 AM Pacific