Our Response

The American people themselves appear to be very generous in response to the horrific disaster in Southern Asia. But the response of our government has been far less than stellar and it's once again cast us in a very poor light throughout the world.

Once again, Mr. Bush has led us into a disastrous situation that points the world's finger at us. Yes, our offer of aid has increased from a paltry $15 million to $350 million (although Bush kept saying billion during one of his conferences) but only after much criticism. Even $350 million represents what we spend blasting the hell out of Iraq in 40 hours (or less than two full days); it's a trifle compared to what we spent in Florida ($14 billion) where few lives were lost so Mr. Bush could get re-elected.

Yesterday, in his weekly radio address, Mr. Bush said we're doing still more. But what we're doing is flying flags... a week after the disaster struck.. which won't rescue or feed a single child, let alone find thousands of Americans still unheard from whom Mr. Powell said today remain unaccounted for.

We've managed to divert attention from this tragedy to our poor response. People won't remember how many individual Americans ponied up their money to help; they'll remember that the U.S. was cheap. That's what our leader has done (besides cutting brush at his play ranch in Crawford and sending his fat brother who really doesn't have much knowledge of real disaster). Once again, he's tried to make the U.N. and international relief agencies the bad guy when the finger gets pointed at him (and us).

Contrary to American belief that we spend huge sums of money on foreign aid (polls show they believe we contribute some 10-30% of U.S. tax dollars to it), we actually only spend less than 1% in helping other countries each year. Per capita, we spend far less than most developed countries in helping others.