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After decades of providing $billions in assistance to Haiti, and faced with a fresh catastrophe, the United States has rushed in to help. But the results promise to be no better than past efforts - which have been disastrous for our small neighbor. Read More
I agree, I've heard about
I agree, I've heard about people trying to take in or adopt orphan children from Haiti. But what about all the kids in this country that want and need to be adopted. All the money being spent to help Haiti even though we're in debt to China after all the crap that's happened in this decade. We’re no longer the richest country in the world. When are we going to learn that we need to take care of ourselves before helping others? Of course we should help those in need, but then again Haiti has been in need for years. And for some reason they still can't get it together over there. The Dominican Republic seems to be doing fine and they share the same island.
Insightful...But Politically Incorrect
Forty years ago, when it was still possible to express a really inconvenient truth, Edward Banfield published Unheavenly City. If all the copies haven't been burned, it provides a perfect analysis of the Haitian phenomenon. It also explains why throwing money at a problem is ineffective at best and counter productive at worst.
Haiti
Here is Matt Taibbi's excellent analysis of David Brooks' column.
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/01/18/translating-david-brooks-haiti/
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Wow!
Although Matt Taibi has just attacked Brooks' views right around the scrotum, I revel that there's someone in the universe like Taibi - that someone can just speak his mind, and at least tell one story the way it is!
However, one Brooks' point - and my essential point - is that our giving isn't gong to solve the problems Haiti faces - and is actually doing a poor job solving the problems caused by the earthquake itself. And, the funny thing is, Taibi - although he fundamentally dislikes Brooks and his point of view, seems to agree our donations are wasted, as follows:
"[U]nlike Brooks, I actually lived in the Third World for ten years and I admit it — I’m not exactly in the habit of sending checks to Abkhazian refugees, mainly because I’m not interested in buying some local Russian gangster a new Suzuki Samurai to tool around Sochi in. And I’ve actually seen what happens to the money people think they’re giving to Russian orphanages goes, so no dice there, either."
Terry - what are you 1-year
Terry - What's your 1-year assessment of the situation in Haiti?
Here is the Times' Nicholas Kristof's (Kristoff criticized those who claimed the great claims for helping Haiti were self-congratulatory and futile):
Haiti, Nearly a Year Later
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 1, 2010
An emergency cholera hospital is the grimmest kind of medical center, and it’s a symbol of the succession of horrors that have battered Haiti over the last year. . . .
But reconstruction has barely started. Most of the rubble is still waiting to be cleared off, and more than one million people are still living in tents.
Part of the problem is that the government, crippled by the quake, has done little. Another is that aid groups created a parallel state that further diminishes the government — and a country needs a central authority to make decisions. The limitations of aid are very much on display in Haiti. . . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/opinion/02kristof.html?hp
Look
Yes, and Taibbi goes on to say:
"But you know what? Next time there’s an earthquake in Russia or
Georgia, I’m probably going to wait at least until they’re finished
pulling the bodies of dead children out of the rubble before I start
writing articles blasting a foreign people for being corrupt, lazy
drunks with an unsatisfactorily pervasive achievement culture whose
child-rearing responsibilities might have to be yanked from them
by with-it Whitey for their own good."
Mr. Peele wrote:
"However, one Brooks' point - and my essential point - is that our
giving isn't gong to solve the problems Haiti faces - and is actually
doing a poor job solving the problems caused by the earthquake itself.
And, the funny thing is, Taibi - although he fundamentally dislikes
Brooks and his point of view, seems to agree our donations are wasted"
I think that you and David Brooks are engaging in extreme over-generalizing.
Say a kids goes to school, while his classmates learn to read, he doesn't.
Does that mean that he fundamentally is incapable of reading? And that any
attempt so give him extra aid and instruction, or to try different methods,
would be a complete waste of time and money?
Similarly, just because some aid has not worked or has been wasted, it
does not follow that all aid money is wasted and none of it has done
any good. Taibbi writes that he would not give money to Russian orphanages,
that's probably good advice. Luckily, for those who do want to help,
there is the Charity Navigator which does an excellent job rating
and giving details on a large number of charities.
http://www.charitynavigator.org
David Brooks is actually pretty soft-hearted compared to you, as he does
acknowledge that sometimes aid can work and give as an example "the Harlem
Children’s Zone". The Harlem Children’s Zone has been very effective, but
also very expensive. Where did all the extra money come from? Donations.
So first Brooks argues that there is no point in helping Haiti as
aid doesn't work, but then he turns around and says that actually
aid does work, as long as it is the right kind of aid. Well Duh!
There is a whole industry of papers and think tanks and conferences
on the vexing problem of what does work and what doesn't work in
Aid programs. Perhaps that's something you might want to look into
before condemning all aid as a waste of money.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/back-to-school/essay-what-wor...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Movement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-lending
If you wish, I'm WORSE than David Brools
"David Brooks is actually pretty soft-hearted compared to you, as he does acknowledge that sometimes aid can work and give as an example the Harlem Children’s Zone."
Did I actually say I don't think anything works, because I report that our efforts in Haiti have been futile, and are currently being overrated? Beasue I don't believe that. If rooting for domestic programs counts, I believe charter schools have improved education in Harlem and elsewhere. (By the way, the New York State legislature bypassed a chance to receive $700 million in federal aid for charter schools - "It is astonishing and outrageous that Silver and Sampson kissed goodbye a shot at $700 million out of blind opposition to charter schools - which have been among the most important sources of high-quality education for poor and minority children."
I appreciate that, because you feel for those poor people in Haiti, you'd like to believe we are helping them. But if we want to help them, rushing there after an earthquake has limited impact, even as every human saved (a microscopic proportion of those injured and killed) is to be valued. Many of the Americans there - quite a few of whom died themselves - were trying to have a longer-term impact. I admire them. And they too helped individuals. But, even given many efforts of this sort, and $billions in aid, we haven't improved Haiti, and the country is susceptible to a variety of depredations, including suffering due to natural disasters. This includes many thousands of people who have died of injuries since the earthquake. We have to acknowledge these realities to deal effectively with them. Convincing ourselves otherwise, if anything, prevents that acknowledgment, and allows what has transpired - or things similar to it - to recur.
Recommend
So let me get this correct, you are saying that some domestic
aid programs can and do work, but that any aid to Haiti
categorically does not work? But how do you know? You provide
no evidence, no links, no details to back up your grand assertion.
Perhaps things would be even worse there without all those aid dollars.
Billions has been spent on treating those with Schizophrenia,
and so far with no cure in sight. Does that mean that all
the money spent has been wasted? And that we should just
stop "wasting" money on merely ameliorating the symptoms of
Schizophrenia when there is no cure in sight?
The problem I have with your article is that you are using
your stature and popular blog to try to persuade people
not donate at all to any aid program working in Haiti.
That just seems really irresponsible. If you are worried
about charities wasting money in Haiti (which I'm sure
is a problem) why not find a charity that has been effective
and honest and recommend that one?
My, you are snotty
I'm going to take back my kudos for pointing out the Taibi rant.
If Haiti isn't a self-evident, televised case that something ($billions in gov't aid and legions of charitable, religious, and NGO interventions) isn't working, I have nothing to add.
Here is a headline from today's NY Times, from a guy who is saying essentially the identical thing to David Brooks in a much more PC way, by giving historical explanations for Haiti's current state:
To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature
By MARK DANNER
Outside aid is vital for recovery, but will do little to restore the country if the man-made causes that lie beneath the Haitian malady are not addressed.
This sympathetic, knowledgeable person is also decrying the status quo of our assistance until now - and how could he do otherwise?
Funnily, we're not really concerned with helping,
but with looking like we're helping.
New York Times, January 22, 2010
PARIS — Far from Haiti’s battered international airport, relief groups are growing more strident in their complaints about how coveted landing spots are doled out among charity groups and prominent visitors by the U.S. Air Force.
Médecins Sans Frontières, the international emergency medical relief group that was founded in France, has seen eight of its planes from Europe diverted, the most recent on Wednesday.
“It’s a very confusing situation and difficult to understand,” said Marie-Noëlle Rodrigue, deputy director for operations for Médecins Sans Frontières in Paris.
She acknowledged the severe damage to the Port-au-Prince airport, where the control tower was destroyed by the earthquake on Jan. 12 and traffic is directed by the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron of the U.S. Air Force. “What is unacceptable to us is the priorities,” Ms. Rodrigue said in an interview.
She and the group’s director of operations, Thierry Durand, called it “shocking” and “crazy” that planes with lifesaving equipment were diverted while, for instance, Edward G. Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania, was able to land in a private plane in Port-au-Prince on a mission to help transport Haitian orphans to the United States.
Tell the Times to stop being a downer!
NY Times, Jan 23:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The relief effort in Haiti could end up being the most difficult, faith-testing recovery from a modern disaster, perhaps even exceeding that from the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to United Nation officials and aid groups with experience in large-scale catastrophes.
Haiti, already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, was barely showing signs of recovery from the 2008 hurricane season when the earthquake flattened its capital, Port-au-Prince, crippling the country’s already weakened transportation and service delivery network.
Local aid groups that would normally help guide international efforts were damaged themselves, while the United Nations lost at least 70 staff members, and 146 more remain unaccounted for.
“You’re talking about a country that pre-earthquake had limited resources and capability, and what resources it did have were concentrated in the capital,” said Kim Bolduc, who is coordinating the relief effort for the United Nations. “This context helps explain why this emergency is probably the most complex in history, more than the tsunami, more than the Pakistan earthquake” of 2005.
The difficulties have confounded aid workers across the country, even those who have dealt with some of world’s worst disasters in recent years. At a first aid tent in the middle of a soccer field where hundreds of people are now living in Jacmel, a coastal city that was among the worst-hit, a French doctor threw his hands in the air.
“I am very, very surprised,” the doctor, François Sarda, a volunteer with Aides Actions Internationales Pompiers, said of the three days it took the aid group to get in and the chaos he found when he finally arrived. The group was forced to fly to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and take a boat from there. “At least in the tsunami we had some infrastructure,” he said.
Trade
Mr. Peele, I'm sorry for calling you irresponsible, I guess
you were just voicing your opinion...
Thanks for the info on the Danner article. Very interesting.
One thing he does point out is that:
"America could start by throwing open its markets to Haitian
agricultural produce and manufactured goods, broadening and
making permanent the provisions of a promising trade bill
negotiated in 2008. Such a step would not be glamorous; it
would not “remake Haiti.”"
A very good point. Especially considering how China has been
transformed by free trade with America. From a dirt poor country
to a country with a growing middle-class.
Believe it or not, the lessons of China have not been completely
lost on the aid community. The result is a growing fair-trade
movement, which has been able to provide income to many people
in Haiti.
Free trade, and fair trade a long term solutions, but for
now they do need help, just as any place would need help
after suffering such a powerful earthquake.
http://www.haitiwebs.com/emagazine/content/view/286/155/lang,en/
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/stores/producers/Haiti...
http://www.fairtradefederation.org/ht/display/EventDetails/i/12234
No problem, Terry
I've been reflecting on how CNN's coverage differs from all other news networks'. They are unflinching in showing violence, death, lack of supplies. Sanjay Gupta's "my faith in humanity has been completey trashed" (following a UN medical personnel's abandoning a hmake-shift hospital - and all its patients) is hard to bear. But I commend his and CNN's honesty - the story must be told.
Here's hoping we can improve how we handle this - and subsequent - tragedies for humanity.
For anyone who cares
As I watched a televised news report that Bill Clinton is really angry that only a fraction of the promised donations to Haiti have been delivered, I read this headline (one of many I have seen) in today's Times:
Haiti’s Displaced, Left Clinging to the Edge
By DEBORAH SONTAG
Six months after an earthquake, only 28,000 of 1.5 million displaced Haitians have new homes, and Port-au-Prince remains a tableau of life in the ruins.
Not a pretty picture of humanitarian potential and ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
Is Mike Taibi still on this one? (CNN recently returned there.)
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