The latest from Haiti: The French are protesting that US management of the airport includes giving Americans priority for evacuation. Really? And had France been running the airport, they would not have given priority to evacuating French? Mais non....
Christopher Booker writes in The Daily Telegraph on why the response of the US v. the EU to Haiti shows once again the vast difference between real & fantasy superpower status. Re Haiti:
Compare and contrast the initial responses of two "major world powers" to the Haitian earthquake disaster. Within hours of Port-au-Prince crumbling into ruins, the US had sent in an aircraft carrier with 19 helicopters, hospital and assault ships, the 82nd Airborne Division with 3,500 troops and hundreds of medical personnel. They put the country's small airport back on an operational footing, and President Obama pledged an initial $100 million dollars in emergency aid.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the European Union geared itself up with a Brussels press conference led by Commission Vice-President Baroness Ashton, now the EU's High Representative – our new foreign minister. A scattering of bored-looking journalists in the Commission's lavishly appointed press room heard the former head of Hertfordshire Health Authority stumbling through a prepared statement, in which she said that she had conveyed her "condolences" to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, and pledged three million euros in aid.
This contrast was echoed by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami contrast:
Memories might have gone back to December 2004, which saw similarly contrasting responses to the Indian Ocean tsunami catastrophe which cost nearly 300,000 lives. Again, within hours the US took the lead in forming an alliance with Australia, India and Japan, and had sent in two battle groups fully equipped to deal with such an emergency, including 20 ships led by two carriers with 90 helicopters. President Bush immediately pledged $35 million, later rising to $350 million. Because they were self-sufficient, the US forces pulled off a stupendously successful life-saving operation, almost entirely ignored by the British media, notably the BBC (whose journalists on the spot were nevertheless quite happy to hitch lifts from US helicopters).
The EU, by contrast, pledged three million euros for the tsunami victims, called for a three-minute silence (three times longer than is customary to remember the millions who died in two world wars) and proposed a "donors' conference" in Jakarta nearly two weeks later to discuss what might be done.
Tragically, as Anne Applebaum notes among the dreamers are those calling for Haiti to emerge stronger and better from this tragedy--now routinely labeled "Biblical":
Though the earthquake itself was powerful, its impact was multiplied many, many times by the weakness of civil society and the absence of the rule of law in Haiti. As Roger Noriega has written, "you can literally see the dysfunction from space." Satellite photos of Hispaniola, the island split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, show green forests on the Dominican side and bare, deforested hills on the Haitian side. Mudslides and collapsing houses were routine in Haiti even before this disaster. Laws designed to prevent erosion, and building codes designed to prevent criminally shoddy construction, were ignored. The rickety slums of Port-au-Prince were constructed in ravines and on steep, unstable hills. When they collapsed, they collapsed completely.
So incredibly weak were Haiti's public institutions that nothing is left of them either. Parliament, churches, hospitals and government offices no longer exist. Haiti's archbishop is dead. The head of the U.N. mission is dead. There is a real possibility that violent gangs will emerge to take the place of leadership, to control food supplies, to loot what remains to be looted. There is a real possibility, in the coming days, of epidemics, mass starvation and civil war.
AA recalls that the Boxing Day Tsunami & Katrina aftermaths worked because of civic efforts:
I don't remember feeling this utter hopelessness about previous natural disasters. After the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 there were equally horrific scenes and stories: Whole villages swept away, people drowned in their homes, American families wading through water clutching their possessions on their heads. But after the initial chaos in both places, it was possible to coordinate basic assistance. In fact, the victims of Katrina were moved quickly out of New Orleans. Remember the buses to Texas, the Americans who offered their spare rooms to homeless families, the churches and schools that "adopted" refugees from the Gulf Coast? Although I would never claim that the result is satisfactory -- neither the city nor the adjacent coastline will ever be rebuilt as it was, and hundreds of thousands of people will never truly recover -- at least there were no epidemics, no mass starvation, no civil war.
The same is true in Indonesia. It is even possible to read assessments of the worst-hit places, such as the region of Aceh -- from the World Bank, for example -- that describe life there as better than ever. I am certain that many disagree. There are, however, no scenes in Aceh of what everyone always calls "biblical" tragedy. Indonesia is not a society of utopian perfection, and neither is the United States. But both have enough social cohesion to support indigenous charities; both have enough educated people to plan reconstruction; both are capable of absorbing lessons learned, of rebuilding villages and cities with an eye toward future floods, of helping their own refugees resettle.
One thing, AA writes, is no longer permissible: colonial oversight. Yet that might be Haiti's only hope, were it possible. It isn't. And many of Haiti's most enterprising citizens live abroad, sending scads of money back but keeping skills in their adopted countries.
Bottom Line. The US does the heaviest lifting, while the EU--and their UN pals--do the loudest talking. And barring a miracle--no, a succession of miracles--Haiti's future is bleak and bleaker.
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