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January 05, 2005
UN and Tsunami Relief Efforts.
From the NY Times:
Jan Egeland, the United Nations' emergency coordinator, acknowledged the many obstacles but called the global response "phenomenal." He spoke on a day when expectations rose that pledges could far exceed $2 billion before a meeting here on Thursday of donor nations that will discuss how to coordinate the aid
Money and meetings eh?
For his part, Mr. Wirajuda, a Harvard Law School graduate, went out of his way to praise the performance of the American military in the aid effort. "We particularly appreciate the crucial role that the United States armed forces play in providing helicopters for relief assistance for victims and survivors at the remote and isolated areas," he said.
Looks like a decent military infrastucture has its value eh?
Even as contributions mounted, the United Nations office overseeing
relief from Geneva appealed for generators, water purification
equipment, some 250 trucks and cargo planes able to land on short
runways, which it said only the United States and Britain could
provide, according to Reuters.
Who’d a thought it eh? The UN appealing for just the sort of planes that the US, Australia etc are already flying in the region.
Jim, it’s OK, I know the UN is doing something. Just a little less than we might expect from an organisation specifically set up to do this sort of stuff, eh?
January 5, 2005 in United Nations | Permalink
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Comments
"Looks like a decent military infrastucture has its value eh?"
Who said it didn't? In fact, this was one of my points - if the UN had a military infrastructure of its own, it would be able to do even more.
"Jim, it’s OK, I know the UN is doing something."
I know you know, but I just thought I'd point out that you prefer to tell lies about them doing nothing, because that suits your political persuasion more. It's deeply dishonest, and no amount of back-tracking will change that.
Tim adds: Jim, you appear to have missed a vital part of your education, that bit of economics. You might note that much of this blog is devoted to matters economic so you shouldn’t be all that surprised when I deploy economic type arguments.
It is extremely rare in economics to be interested in or wonder about the absolute result. To take one obvious example, industrialisation of western Europe and the Soviet Union. Both industrialised, both did so using wildly different methods. We are almost totally uninterested in the fact that both industrialised. We are extremely interested in the methods by which each did so, and in comparing the results of those different methods. Which did it better? Which did it at less cost? Which did it most efficiently?
We are interested in relative results, not absolute ones. Your consistent desire for State intervention in development issues is a similar symptom of your blindness on the matter. There is no one (outside the eco-loonies of Earth First and their like) who does not want the currently poor countries to become rich. All the arguments are over what is the best, the most efficient, the quickest, way of them becoming so.
To the UN and relief efforts. That the UN has delivered blankets, or water, or food, is not the point at issue. It is whether a large and well-paid international bureaucracy has done so better or worse than the other methods on offer, military and private donation. I think we can see quite clearly that the latter two are doing so better than the first of the trio of methods.
That’s the point, the relative success of different methods, for after all, we all want the maximum amount of aid to get to the devastated regions as fast as possible. Which method seems to be working best? Therefore, which method should we use in future disasters? In order to work these things out wehave to actually study what is happening. This means that yes, we do have to lampoon bureaucrats who claim that the UN is delivering, when it is in fact the US Marines, say.
Posted by: Jim | Jan 5, 2005 9:00:39 AM
"We are interested in relative results, not absolute ones."
Weasel words. You were 'interested in absolute results' when you were calling the UN relief effort "nowhere to be seen" (NOT "relatively nowhere to be seen". "Nowhere" is a pretty *absolute* term, donchathink?). You also repeated Tim Blair's lie that the UN's "first priority" while "people are dying" was to "Set up "a camp for relief workers"". I don't care how you try to dress it up now - it was a disgusting lie, defamatory to all those UN staff who are out there *saving lives* while you sit on your arse and spin yarns.
I pointed this out pretty much immediately in comments, and not only did you not retract or even reply, you went on to repeat Mark Steyn's maliciously misleading remarks about the UN being "conspicuous by their all but total absence on the ground". Another 'absolute' description, another lie, as you well knew. But who cares as long as it sounds good, eh?
"That the UN has delivered blankets, or water, or food, is not the point at issue."
It was when you said they were "nowhere". You now realise that's not true (you probably realised when you said it), so you've changed your tune. Anyone with a shred of decency or self-respect would admit the mistake but apparently that doesn't include you.
"It is whether a large and well-paid international bureaucracy has done so better or worse than the other methods on offer, military and private donation."
Give the UN an aircraft carrier strike force and see how they do, otherwise you're comparing apples and oranges. The UN has brought tons of aid - by air and by land - to the region, but in Aceh US and Australian military units distributed supplies from the main airport because the rest of the area was so cut off. Great, I'm glad they did, but you seem to think this is some criticism of everyone else. Apparently bringing stuff *to* Aceh is not worthy of comment - if you're not the dude flying it around in a helicopter you don't get any credit.
You seem to think that the relief effort is first and foremost a competition, the most important result of which is that the UN is losing. Fortunately, the people on the ground - including the UN and the US military - are more concerned about co-operating to get the job done than getting into a pissing contest.
I'm not saying the relief effort is perfect, and if anyone wants to present any actual *evidence* of UN wrongdoing I'd like to see it. But you haven't - you've just repeated second-hand bullshit from your ring of right-wing blogger cranks.
I don't know why I'm spending so much time trying to argue with someone who clearly doesn't give a damn about the facts. You had your line - the UN is a 'sclerotic', 'faceless' bureaucracy that can't and won't help - and you were going to spin it no matter what the reality on the ground was. You don't actually care what's happening out there in the disaster-hit areas - what matters is that you get to play your little games and spin your little lines. It's pathetic.
Posted by: Jim | Jan 6, 2005 2:11:39 PM
