While tens of thousands of innocent human beings were perishing in preternaturally boiling seas, the president was busy sawing logs and cutting brush on vacation in Crawford, Texas. Only three days after the onslaught, now dressed in a formal suit, did he give a press conference regretting the tragedy.
The United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, had claimed that "the rich nations are not giving enough" and were "stingy." President Bush, obviously peeved during his press conference at the criticism, seemed to want to say, "I am not stingy!" But then he only replied testily that "the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed." In truth, Egeland, one of the U.N.'s most serious and spirited officers, had actually not mentioned the U.S. by name at all but had only said that he thought the wealthy of the world were not giving enough to "the largest natural disaster in recorded human history."
He was right, but for a different reason than probably most observers and readers perceived.
First of all, it is true, as the president said, that the United States, including individuals and organizations, has for many years been the major donor to humanitarian disasters in the world; in fact, its donations were, last year, an impressive 40 percent of the world's, or some $2.4 billion in food, cash and humanitarian relief. But it is also true that the initial American offering this week of $15 million for tsunami victims, not incidentally most of them Muslim, was rightly considered ludicrous by a world critical of humongous American investments in Iraq.
Second of all, when we talk about another kind of aid -- not immediate disaster aid, but long-term development aid -- the story changes dramatically. America's foreign aid adds up to only 0.14 percent of the country's gross national product, compared with 0.92 percent given by the most generous nation, Norway, with barely 5 million people. The New York Times reported this week that, according to polls, "most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent."
Yahoo News article
The United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, had claimed that "the rich nations are not giving enough" and were "stingy." President Bush, obviously peeved during his press conference at the criticism, seemed to want to say, "I am not stingy!" But then he only replied testily that "the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed." In truth, Egeland, one of the U.N.'s most serious and spirited officers, had actually not mentioned the U.S. by name at all but had only said that he thought the wealthy of the world were not giving enough to "the largest natural disaster in recorded human history."
He was right, but for a different reason than probably most observers and readers perceived.
First of all, it is true, as the president said, that the United States, including individuals and organizations, has for many years been the major donor to humanitarian disasters in the world; in fact, its donations were, last year, an impressive 40 percent of the world's, or some $2.4 billion in food, cash and humanitarian relief. But it is also true that the initial American offering this week of $15 million for tsunami victims, not incidentally most of them Muslim, was rightly considered ludicrous by a world critical of humongous American investments in Iraq.
Second of all, when we talk about another kind of aid -- not immediate disaster aid, but long-term development aid -- the story changes dramatically. America's foreign aid adds up to only 0.14 percent of the country's gross national product, compared with 0.92 percent given by the most generous nation, Norway, with barely 5 million people. The New York Times reported this week that, according to polls, "most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent."
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