Damned if we do. . .

Ah, NPR. The source of so many infuriated tirades, and also occasionally the source of information.

Last night I was driving home from Aspen, listening to NPR as I navigated the curves and turns of I-70 in the dark. To avoid falling asleep like my lovely wife, I started talking to the radio in my head, since it is more fun to actively mock people in my mind than it is to merely listen to them. Anyway, that late at night, Colorado NPR carries broadcasts from the BBC World Service, which is generally staffed by Brits who sound more bored by the news they are announcing than they would be by, say, their cereal boxes. These stuffy Queensmen happened to be talking about Haiti, and the relief effort going on over there. This is generally not something I would rant about, since I completely support the relief, and am pulling for the Haitian people to not only get relief but to also get a leg up towards economic success in the long-term. However, this bored-as-watching-paint-dry reporter had two guests on, who were supposedly experts on the relief effort. They were talking about their frustrations that America has suspended emergency evacuation flights from Haiti to the US for critically wounded persons. Certainly news-worthy content. The official line is that America stopped the flights due to "logistical complications," and the un-official line was that American hospitals would not take more Haitians until someone had first agreed to pay for their care.

I honestly don't know anything about this aspect of the story, but that is not what I am ranting about, anyway. Just back-story so you can understand what I am about to go off on, see.

So this one dude with something like a French-Canadian-Speaking-English accent started unloading on the US relief effort. He made all sorts of claims that the Americans were doing this and that wrong, and that "logistics" were always the problem with Americans, and dontcha-remember-Katrina-where-the-Yanks-couldn't-even-take-care-of-their-own-people, and on and on. The female co-guest also added her own pepper to the mix, stating that America had "barged" into Haiti and "commandeered" the relief effort, and she claimed essentially that we were making a dog's dinner of the whole operation.

So you know what? Maybe they are right. Maybe we are not doing a great job of things down there. I honestly don't know. But here is my question: who else is there? Who else has the wherewithal to come in as an outside power and even attempt an operation like this? (If you are thinking UN, I would just like to take this moment to ask you to research which UN nation constitutes over 50% of the UN's funding and man-power).

So the US isn't helping out fast enough, and there are hurdles. OK. Well, actually, NOT OK. It is not OK to bite the hand that feeds you. Beggars cannot be choosers, and there are few if any people who more adequately fit the bill of beggars than do the Haitian people right now. They have so little, and the little they do have is lying amid rubble more often than not. They need help, and nobody is in a better position financially, militarily and economically to help the Haitians than the US. So what do we get for our efforts?

Why, the same thing the US always gets when we help out anywhere: suspicion, recrimination, criticism and blame. Whatever we do, it is not good enough. However many people we help, there are always other vociferous boobies who can only find fulfilment in searching for criticisms. If we pull a survivor out of the rubble, we get complaints that the survivor was too dusty. If we stabilize an economy, we get accusations of being profit-motivated, heartless capitalists. If we liberate a country from a dictator, we are accused of being imperialist expansionists.

In short, whatever we do is wrong, nothing we do is enough. Why? Because we are America, and since nobody can do what we do as well as we do, all they are left with is little-man syndrome of complaint and whining. What makes me proud among all of this is that America still goes about helping people and following American values. We are far from perfect, and we are admittedly opportunistic and (like everyone else) do things that reflect well upon us. But we still go out and do things to help other people in the world, no matter how popular or beloved we are for our efforts. So the critics can go to hell, and we will go to Haiti.