The State Department was put on the defensive today following U.N. humanitarian aid chief Jan Egeland's comments that many of the world's wealthy nations were being "stingy" in regards to supplying aid to the tsunami ravaged countries of South Asia.
"It is beyond me why we are so stingy, really," were Mr. Egeland's exact comments.
There is no doubt that this comment was directed towards the United States, and is really absurd. To back up his claim of American stinginess, Mr Egeland cites the fact that the preliminary aid being supplied to the region is only a few tenths of a percentage of our GDP. This number is misleading, for what Mr. Egeland doesn't take into account is the fact that America provides more international aid than any other nation, or any other combination of nations for that matter. Nor does he take into account the billions of dollars we spend defending not only ourselves, but the rest of the world as well. He also ignores the existence of our free trade laws, which allow the less wealthy nations such as Mexico to profit from America, sometimes at the expense of Americans (textiles moving to foreign nations for cheaper labor being an example).
An interesting sidenote to all of this, while the U.S. has promised $35 million in aid so far, our friends the French have only promised $135, 000. Now that's stingy.
UPDATE (10:58 p.m.): Tom Bevan provides some perspective on the tsunami and the fight in Iraq.
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