"The 'tsunami' victims that we don't count"
...In the abstract, the outpouring was appropriate. In context, the sympathy was a stench unto itself. Tens of thousands of people die by an act of nature and we say we cannot imagine the horror. We say it defies comprehension. We call it a catastrophe. In Iraq we kill off thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of innocent civilians with our own hands, and we reject any attempt to comprehend what we have done. Countless Iraqi civilians are homeless. We call it liberation...."South Asia: Natural or Public Health Disaster?"
...This tragedy brings the world’s attention to a disaster that, unfortunately, has been in the making for decades. Poor infrastructure in this impoverished region and the policies of international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, have ensured that this natural disaster will turn into a public health nightmare. As the most prominent member of the these institutions, the United States has a greater responsibility in South Asian relief efforts than the $350 million in aid pledged to date will yield.... International financial institutions contribute to this public health disaster in two ways. First, their penchant for water privatization restricts access for the most vulnerable communities.... Second, pressure from powerful countries and transnational corporations can also threaten public health in Asia by pressuring governments to repeal progressive health care policies for Western commercial benefit...."Congo, with 4 million dead, watches the world aid Asia"
...But as Congo watches the global scramble to raise billions in aid for victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami, many here wonder why Asian suffering stirs action while African suffering is greeted largely with apathy. The International Rescue Committee, based in New York, said nearly 4 million people have been killed in Congo since the start of five-year war in 1998, most from war-induced disease and starvation. Fighting persists in the county's east, the epicenter of the war, and 1,000 are dying each day, half of them younger than 5....
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So when we don't insert ourselves into a war that's killing hundreds of thousands in the Congo, it's cruel indifference. But when we remove a tyrant who's caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the notion of calling this "liberation" is mocked. I'm not saying that we shouldn't intervene in places like the Congo, Rwanda, the Sudan, Bosnia, or Kosovo. I think that we should intervene as much as possible in all of these places. But I think it's hypocritical for anti-establishment types to criticize the establishment no matter what it does. If the establishment intervenes in the name of self-defense and liberation, then it's really just about oil or some other vulgar motive. When we don't intervene in other places it's because we're racist or just generally indifferent to human suffering. We can't do anything right for these people.
And as for the notion that the United States bears a greater responsibility for the public health crisis in South Asia because of our involvement there, this demonstrates almost as much hypocrisy. What would these places be like if it hadn't been for Western involvement? In India, they'd still be putting widows on funeral pyres, rather than building call centers and software development campuses in Bangalore. If it weren't for the West there wouldn't be any modern medicine to lack. People would simply be washed away one day, and the rest would have no homes and no medicine or sanitation. I grant that Westerners abused their superior economic and military position with respect to these countries in the past, but aren't the people of this region better off the way they are with the involvement that we've had than if we'd never interacted with them at all? Is there no moderate position between total lack of engagement and total responsibility for the people of a country? Just because we do a little bit of business with the people of a country, does that mean that we're automatically responsible for bringing the entire country up to Western living standards within a single generation? And if we do offer a country help in raising their living standards (through institutions like the World Bank), do we not have any right to insist on some conditions (economic reforms) that we think will ensure that our donations are used wisely?
I have difficulty taking seriously all of these anti-establishment, racial, socialist, communist, "progressive" critiques of establishment policies because they simply seem to try to drag everyone down into their own crass, materialistic view of the world. Many of the great religions of the world, especially Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism—coincidentally, some of the major religions of the South Asian region—call on individuals to renounce material things and to accept physical suffering, but these materialistic, anti-establishment types, some of whom have worked their way into the "progressive" branches of Christian churches, drag everything down into a fight over material resources: money, food, health care. They're so incapable of understanding any good that doesn't feed their belly, heal their body, or give them an orgasm, that they accuse those of us who stand up for higher, spiritual values of being "imperialists". The vulgarity of it all is just tiresome.
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