Stingy? Let's prove them wrong.

Streak has been hosting a lively discussion on the U.S.'s slow and tiny response to the disaster in Asia. I agree that our president was much too slow to respond and our "initial" aid is much too small. Hopefully the pressure of the world's eye and the magnitude of the disaster will open the pursestrings. The New York Times editorial page has this to say:

Are We Stingy? Yes
President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.
We beg to differ.

Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was
privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of
the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he
held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would
contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend
on the Bush inaugural festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap.
Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and
said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other
nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America
gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002,
those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.
Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver.
Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents
because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And
back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give
African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the
account has yet to disperse a single dollar.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises.