Tragedy in Haiti Brings Out Compassion Amidst Lack of International Understanding

A week ago a devastating earthquake struck the poor country of Haiti causing massive destruction and great loss of life. The true extent of the damages and losses are not fully assessed but by any measure it is beyond normal comprehension.

The world's people have risen up and began sending aid to the people of Haiti. This outpouring of compassion and generosity has met the reality of third world living. Haiti in its best time was an impoverished, undeveloped , polarized country led by people who have at times not demonstrated high levels of honesty and integrity. At its best, Haiti's infrastructure was poor. Roads were in poor condition once outside the city center and in many places were not much more than trails. Clean and fresh water was not a daily staple for most of the population; food was a daily struggle for many; medical care for the most basic needs was virtually non-existent except for the privileged classes. A large majority of Haitians did not have and have never had adequate housing before the earthquake. The airport before the disaster could be classified as world class by any measure.

A 7 point earthquake only made a bad situation worse. So it troubles me when I continue to hear the news media and politicians lament the fact that it is a monumental task for any nation or group of nations to get help to the millions of people affected in Haiti. We still want to measure the entire world by American and European standards. We want to go into countries and believe that just because we are from the richer countries we can just appear on any scene and immediately make it into little America or little Britain. More and more politicians and curious dignitaries, as the call themselves arrive with their entourages and TV cameras to only take up the much needed air space and land space si that they can make speeches and take pictures. They fail to realize that they are adding to the congestion and delays.

The world's resources with food, water, clothing, emergency rescuers, medical teams, medical supplies, peace keeping forces and technicans to help restores some systematic strategy of delivering much needed aid are doing a phenomenal job to get help to remote and normally unreachable areas of the country. They should be applauded. Already off to a fast paced start, and within the next few weeks, they will have created an infrastructure in Haiti that will be more than the national government has done for their own people in decades. Again the United Nations demonstrates that it is inept, unproductive and incapable of making any valuable contribution to any world situation except empty platitudes in speeches wasting money on corrupt governments, UN employees and consultant studies that sit on shelves in New York as a symbol of their intellectual irrelevance.

We should continue to do all we can to help our brothers and sisters in Haiti and we should do it with all haste and urgency. We cannot however have unrealistic and uninformed expectations of what it takes to setup, execute and manage one of the world's largest search, rescue and recovery missions in a place that was a disaster in everyday living before the earthquake.