Tsunami News

The good news: The United States Navy has arrived:

ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN - Desperate, homeless villagers on the tsunami-ravaged island of Sumatra mobbed American helicopters carrying aid Saturday as the U.S. military launched its largest operation in the region since the Vietnam War, ferrying food and other emergency relief to survivors across the disaster zone.

From dawn until sunset on New Year's Day, 12 Seahawk helicopters shuttled supplies and advance teams from offshore naval vessels while reconnaissance aircraft brought back stark images of wave-wrecked coastal landscapes and their hungry, traumatized inhabitants. . .

More than a dozen other ships were en route to southern Asian waters, with the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault vessel carrying Marines, headed for Sri Lanka, which along with Indonesia was the worst-hit area. The mission involves thousands of sailors and Marines, along with some 1,000 land-based troops.

The odd news: Idled and bored hockey organizations want to help:

USA Hockey and the Ralph-Engelstad Arena will hold a charity event at intermission of Sunday night's second semi-final of the World Junior Ice Hockey Championships to benefit Asian tsunami relief efforts, USA Hockey said.

All proceeds from the Chuck-A-Puck game - in which fans can pay five dollars for foam pucks to throw at targets on the ice - will go to the American Red Cross for use in responding to the disaster in South Asia.

Guess it's something hockey players (and future players) can do when not busy with current, intense efforts to resolve the NHL lockout and strike.

The bad news: The UN isn't doing squat--except taking credit for the relief efforts of others, especially the U.S. According to the Belmont Club, "much of the UN relief consists of rehandling national aid:"

"Notice to the UN: The USA is by far the biggest donor to the UN system. We pay for about 25% of the whole operation, but when you look at operations like WFP or UNHCR, we cough up about 40%. That wheat and rice that the WFP is bragging about? It is almost all from the USA."

Belmont Club goes on to decry the tactic of taking credit for assistance provided by others. For example, "the UN claims that they have set up an "air-freight handling centre" in Aceh, according to UN Undersecretary Egeland:

I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh. Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.

Yet, says the Foreign Service bloggers at Diplomadic, it's false:

I provided this to some USAID colleagues working in Indonesia and their heads nearly exploded. The first paragraph is quite simply a lie. The UN is taking credit for things that hard-working, street savvy USAID folks have done. It was USAID working with their amazing network of local contacts who scrounged up trucks, drivers, and fuel; organized the convoy and sent it off to deliver critical supplies. A UN “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh? Bull! It's the Aussies and the Yanks who are running the air ops into Aceh. We have people working and sleeping on the tarmac in Aceh, surrounded by bugs, mud, stench and death, who every day bring in the US and Aussie C-130s and the US choppers; unload, load, send them off. We have no fancy aid workers' retreat -- notice the priorities of the UN? People are dying and what's the first thing the UN wants to do? Set up "a camp for relief workers" one that would be "fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything."

And a commenter named A.M. Mora y Leon on the same blog added this:

I just talked to a pal on the ground in Jakarta where all the Unicef packages are sitting. And sitting. And would continue to sit...

Except that an American plane now will come to haul that stuff in and deliver it to the battered aceh coast tomorrow. The UN didn't plan this well at all and the Americans are pulling their chestnuts out of the fire, getting the job done beyond Jakarta.

For UN bureaucrats, the world ends at capitals with ritzy hotels, not some godforsaken place like Aceh. So that's as far as their aid goes.

This effort has MADE IN THE USA stamped all over it and even the most fundamentalist Islamofacists in both Jakarta and Aceh are noticing who's doing the heavy lifting and they tell me they do notice.

Tomorrow morning my pals go to help volunteer to load all that UN and everyone else's stuff onto the American planes. They're deeply relieved and grateful to the US for making it happen.

Ok, now the multiple choice quiz:

Door Number 1: According to the UN, America is "stingy."

Door Number 2: According to former International Development Secretary Clare Short, America is trying to undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster.

I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up. Only really the UN can do that job.

Door Number 3: According to Diplomadic, "The UN is a sham."

Door Number 4: According to NHL players, the tsunami was caused by greedy NHL owners. Or possibly Robespierre.

Time to open door three.

More:

Mark Steyn:

If America were to emulate Ireland and Norway, there'd be a lot more dead Indonesians and Sri Lankans. Mr Eddison may not have noticed, but the actual relief effort going on right now is being done by the Yanks: it's the USAF and a couple of diverted naval groups shuttling in food and medicine, with solid help from the Aussies, Singapore and a couple of others. The Irish can't fly in relief supplies, because they don't have any C-130s. All they can do is wait for the UN to swing by and pick up their cheque.