There are over six billion people living on our planet. Of that six billion, almost two billion are Muslims. That's roughly a third of the total population of the earth.
The earthquake that triggered the killer tsunami was centered just off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country. It was also the most severely devastated by the wave. Nearly 100,000 of the victims of the December 26 catastrophe were Indonesian Muslims.
The vast majority of the victims were either Muslims, Buddhists or Hindu.
Now, to the United Nations. The United Nations consists of 186 countries. The most consistent voting bloc is the fifty-seven Islamic countries that generally vote with one voice, especially when the United States or Israel are voting the other way.
The United Nations' head of humanitarian relief, Jan Egeland, criticized the West for being stingy. He didn't specifically mention America, but he cited the exact percentage of the US GDP that is budgeted for foreign aid, so there is little doubt of who the 'stingy West' was, at least in Egeland's mind.
Egeland slammed the United States for not raising taxes so that America could give a greater percentage of its GDP to the UN to distribute as part of the UN's foreign aid package.
Editorials in the Washington Post, the New York Times and other newspapers echoed Egeland's charge, with the New York Times calling America's $350 million in direct government aid 'miserly'.
The United States makes up some six percent of the world's total population, but we pay a quarter of the United Nation's total budget. The United States pays forty percent of the world's total disaster relief aid, and sixty percent of the world's total food donations. The $2.4 billion (that's BILLION) dollars Washington spent in em ergency aid in 2003 represented 40 percent of the total amount of emergency assistance from all bilateral donors provided that year.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was still on his vacation, skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He returned to New York four days later.
The wave struck on Sunday, and it took only until Monday before the US announced its $350 million in initial aid, sent the USS Abraham Lincoln Battle Group, with all its supporting ships, into the region, including helicopters, and C-130 transport planes, sent hundreds of tons of pre-packaged emergency aid supplies, and deployed some 14,000 American troops to help with the recovery and cleanup.
In Indonesia, U.S. helicopters flew many, many sorties, delivering 60,000 pounds of water and supplies, from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln along a 120-mile stretch of Sumatra island's ravaged coastline.
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the richest nations in the Islamic world, donated a paltry $10 million each. The United Arab Emirates donated some $20 million - this to relieve the suffering of their Islamic brothers.
Egypt's contribution so far is $104,000.00. (Egypt gets $2 BILLION in US foreign aid annually)
Assessment: Did anybody notice that the majority of the private donations came from those US corporations? Pfizer donated $10 million in cash and $25 million in drugs. (That is more than oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined). General Motors pledged $2 million in cash, agreed to match employee donations dollar for dollar, and is sending vehicles to transport food and medical supplies to the region.
Other corporate donors include Nike Inc., American Express, General Electric, First Data Corp., Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Exxon-Mobil, Citigroup, Marriott International and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Actress Sandra Bullock donated one million dollars and is neither an activist nor a liberal. (She also donated one million following September 11.) Bono and Bruce Springsteen are promising to hold another 'aid concert' but that will collect other people's money (not theirs) for the victims.
America, as noted at the outset, represents six percent of the global population. But in a catastrophe, it seems to get one hundred percent of the blame. Could the UN be jealous and anxious because the US may funnel its aid through its own channels instead of the UN's various aid agencies.
Does Kofi Annan want to use the catastrophe to shore up the UN's sagging image in the wake of the Oil-For-Food thefts from Iraq? Does the United States want to ensure the aid doesn't end up lining the pockets of UN officials again? So the US is 'too stingy' ...?
By the way, where is the rest of the Islamic world? There are fifty-seven Islamic nations, and the world's biggest Islamic nation is the one that took the hardest hit. But the United States -- the world's largest donor nation -- seems to be grabbing all the headlines for being 'stingy'. Is that fair? Is that objective?? Is that just???
Dr. Michael McKee mmckee101@yahoo.com
