$164 million PER HOUR from private donations poured into relief for Haiti in the week following the calamitous January 12 earthquake. That bears repeating. $164,000,000 per hour!, according to The Chronicle for Philanthropy. Not all of that came from the U.S., to be sure, but much of it did, and rightly so. Haiti, after all, is right in our backyard. One of the poorest nations on planet earth, where the average income is only $2 a day, languishes in the shadow of what is arguably the richest nation in the history of the world.
Of course, there have been on the ground in Haiti for many decades committed and compassionate missionaries and social workers doing stellar work to relieve the suffering of this oppressed nation. Yet, progress has been painfully slow. Navigating through the obstacle course of language barrier, rampant corruption, almost nonexistent infrastructure and all the accompanying ills of systemic poverty, we cannot overstate the significance of their sacrificial service. But, truth be told, most of us seldom if ever thought about Haiti before this earthquake.
Presidents Clinton and Bush, who accepted the assignment to oversee the United States' relief effort, have stated that Haiti has an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild, modernize and rise up stronger than ever as a consequence of the benevolent spotlight that is currently upon them. May it be so.
Perhaps you, like me, take a look at all this and ask yourself, what's wrong with this picture? How is it that we can allow such abject poverty to exist year after year, decade after decade right in our own "neighborhood"? Why is it that we wait until there is a natural disaster of epic proportions to arouse us to direct the resources we had in hand all along to help this suffering people? Were there things we should have been doing in a more proactive way to preempt the suffering? What if the focus of our foreign policy was to eradicate such chronic suffering? What if the primary role of our military was to assist people groups that need a hand to help them overcome circumstances that have held them back for too long? What if we didn't wait for an earthquake to establish modern hospitals, schools and food distribution points? What if we were proactive in assisting them in building earthquake resistant dwellings with proper sewage and water treatment? What if we made caring for the poor the top priority rather than fighting elective wars and bailing out Wall Street?
I do not think it is as big a step as one might imagine to link the responsive to crisis generosity of the American people with a well planned, proactive "war on poverty", to borrow an old, beat up phrase. If we're so ready to flood incredible sums of money into crisis stricken areas when called upon, surely it is reasonable to think we could do so much more to head off the dimensions of potential crises in advance. Let's envision the improvements in foreign relations that could come about if the world truly began to see and believe that our goal, first and foremost, was to serve the world with no-strings-attached generosity and kindness rather than the self-interested bullying that has been the nature of so much of what we have done in foreign policy lately. Rather than our extraordinary generosity toward Haiti being seen as crisis response, why not strive to make it a lifestyle?
