$35 Million Says It All

The death toll from the Sumatran quake and tsunami is now estimated at over 75,000 dead.

The president is right about one thing: that number is beyond comprehension.

But so is his response.

The initial aid he promised the world on behalf of the United States has now been -- in response to widespread criticism -- doubled -- to $35 million. With an "m". His privately-funded fat-cat inauguration parties will cost more than that.

It strikes me that if the countries afflicted had been Islamic primarily (they are not), that an easier narrative about the U.S. response would have prevailed -- one that, like usual, would be ripe for lines of attacks and lines of defense. Either we would give too little, and therefore prove the U.S. has launched a holy war against Islam, or we would be giving so much that our motives would be rendered "transparent" -- i.e., there we go bribing needy countries again.

Instead, our lack of humaneness to this tragedy of historic proportion (the 9-11 dead numbered over 3,000, and note our response and funding) is simply senseless. Quite literally, it renders one numb. Perhaps, as the president says, it's all just beyond comprehension.

To those who think the 9-11 comparison is overwrought, remember the  three largest causes of human death in history: famine, disease, and war. A natural act of such devastation does compare well with a human act of war.

The United States has appropriated over $250 billion (with a "b") for our (non)-response to 9/11 and a separate war of aggression against Iraq. Would it have been so risky for the U.S. to initially -- immediately -- have announced a mere $1 billion in pledged aid to afflicted countries? Isn't that a general enough pronouncement that we would not have been risking regional instability or policy rigidity? Doesn't the magnitude of the devastation surely still dwarf even that amount?

That point won't be lost on the rest of the world.

Another natural force is gathering, and it is gathering in people all around the world. I fear this Sumatran quake may not have just touched off tsunamis. With the senseless cruelty of the United States' response in the immediate aftermath, the world's people will begin to ask themselves how much more misdoing of the U.S. will they simply write off to an historically catastrophic administration? Sure, it's without a mandate, but the United States hasn't exactly risen up in defiance of the putrifaction that has taken hold of its leadership -- in any party.

As disease adds to the still-mounting death toll in the Indian Ocean nations from the tsunamis, this cataclismic event may yet have more of a toll to take in its aftermath... in a nation blinded by its politics and cruel in its ignorance a hemisphere away.