Foreign aid and Katrina

A skeptic speaks in the Guardian:

Katrina is "our tsunami", one US official claimed. Wrong; unless New Orleans finds hundreds of thousands dead, the Asian disaster was far more serious in human terms. But some comparisons are instructive: for Katrina, $10bn was allocated immediately, with two or three times that expected to come; yet after the tsunami Washington first tried to undermine UN coordination efforts and then contributed $850m to the disaster. The impact of this on Muslim public opinion was carefully noted. If we do give for Katrina, let's react as America would to any developing country which fails to prepare for disaster and allows its people to die, such as Zimbabwe or North Korea: set conditions for aid use, channel it away from the government to trusted charities, and insist on intensive scrutiny of the results.

Of course, the humanitarian imperative means that many people in the UK and around the world will rightly want to help those who lost what little they had in Katrina. The emotion is laudable, but the action is unnecessary since the US can easily afford to help all those affected. And giving will be counter-productive if it in any way reduces the US public and media pressure on the Bush administration to do a better job.

If America learned anything from being the recipient of others' charity, it would be worth every penny. But on aid, disasters, climate, poverty, race, religion and more, its failure to listen does great damage to its own vulnerable people and those around the world gripped by poverty, hunger or disease.

After 9/11, the world sent millions of dollars to benefit mainly better-off Americans. Our charity was not necessary then; it is not necessary now.