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by Ian Williams 

Ian Williams is a journalist and U.N. Correspondent for The Nation and a weekly columnist for www.MaximsNews.com.   Ian Williams is the past president of the United Nations Correspondents Association.  See his Bio.  See his columns listed below.   IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com 

          UNITED NATIONS - 7 January 2005   www.MaximsNews.com / --  Anyone in the PR business would tell you that first impressions are what count.  

Faced with the opportunity to respond to the Tsunami and above all to help the world’s biggest Muslim country, Indonesia , with open-handed generosity, the US ’s initial offer of $15 million made the widow’s mite seem like major largesse.    

With a combination of ineptitude and arrogance, the Superpower looked mean and ignorant as well a bully.

A simple phrase like “Whatever it takes” and a Presidential statement of deep sympathy would have done it. But Bush skulked for three days in Crawford, and his outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell was not in a position to be expansive.

The US is not entirely alone. Across Europe there was public outcry at the parsimony and passivity of their governments.

While European and other governments soon said, in various Polyglottish forms, “Whoops, you are quite right: we need to send more,” the administration and its Jingoistic backing singers responded with angry, chauvinistic attacks at the rest of the world, and of course the United Nations.

The blowhard TV and radio channels furiously berated UN humanitarian relief chief Jan Egeland, for allegedly calling American relief efforts “stingy,” while from his uninterrupted holiday on his dude ranch in Crawford, President Bush himself eventually and belatedly responded – and petulantly whined, “Well, I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed. We’re a very generous, kindhearted nation.”

And just to keep up the Administration’s reputation for churlishness, USAID chief Andrew Natsios made an unjustified attack on French generosity.

It is somewhat disturbing to have confirmed yet again that the President seems to rely on Fox TV for his news.

He characterized Egeland’s comment as a specific attack on the US , and on its humanitarian response to the disaster, even though any reference to the original press conference reports would have shown that it was neither.  

Egeland did not single out the United States , and he was not referring to disaster relief.  But if all George W. Bush’s supporters in the media can manage without fact checkers, I suppose it’s a Presidential prerogative to do so as well.

When Egeland had actually made the general point at the press conference the day after the disaster that Western nations were “stingy” with development aid, without singling out the US,  he could not have anticipated the imperfect storm that the rabidly anti-UN media would whip up, which at times almost drove the real disaster off the American airwaves.

Indeed no rational person could have foreseen it: but then, no rational media could have fomented it.

There is room for doubt about the psychopathology of many of the instant pundits wheeled out.

Did they have some nasty childhood experience with a blue-helmeted peacekeeper popping out the woodshed at them? What else can explain their pathological hatred?

If a UN official mentioned it was raining on the East River , would Fox media-lynch him for attacking American weather? Probably, looking at the Oil For Food and Stinginess pseudoscandals.

All that shouting suggests Egeland had indeed hit a raw nerve. Even though he did not say what he was accused of, he would have been entirely correct in doing so.

The US does indeed give the lowest percentage of its national income in development aid of any industrialized country.  

In other words, it is the stingiest of a pretty stingy bunch.

In absolute terms the US gives half of what the Europeans give, and even they are lagging behind, since apart from the Scandinavians and the Dutch, no country gives anywhere near the 0.7% in Development Aid that they pledged to deliver in 1970 and recommitted themselves to in 2000 for the Millennium Development Goals.

The US only gives one fifth, at 0.14%. 

For the world’s biggest economy, that is indeed stingy and it will take it until 2045 at present rates to catch up.

While individual Americans are indeed some of the most generous donors to good causes in the world, their representatives in Washington are persistently mean and isolationist when it comes to overseas development aid.

In fact, polls consistently show that most Americans are basking in an historical memory of the Marshall Plan and think that foreign aid is a major item consuming up to a quarter of their taxes.

Interestingly, a lot of them are happy with that, even though their perceived figure is twenty times the reality.

In contrast,  their representatives in Washington can always put up their hands for billions for a war, or to help Third World Countries buy American weaponry, but have consistently shouted "humbug!" when asked for genuine development aid.

They have chiseled away at it for the last three decades.  This is a pre-Bush thing. As a percentage, US development aid reached its lowest point in 1997 under the Clinton administration, and has actually been climbing since.

But Congress has actually cut back on the Bush administration’s requests for aid appropriations, just as it battled Clinton .

The reason for the magic figure of $35 million which was the White House’s second offer is that it was all that the USAID’s disaster relief budget contained.

That is about enough to equip the heads and replace the toilet seats on a B1 bomber.  Once it was flushed away, we must wait for Congress to approve more, and no one is being very specific about which budget the President is tapping for his $350 million final offer.

While they may indeed respond more generously to the horrors of the natural disaster on their constituents’ TV screens, it is too much to be hoped that Congress will in any way convert quickly to a more charitable frame of mind.

They have yet to deliver a cent of the billions that the President pledged to Africa for the Millennium Account.

Above all the disaster of 100,000 dead in Iraq brought about by openhanded distribution of over $100 billion in military expenditures, stands in ironic contrast even to the $350 million now offered to help countries with equivalent numbers of natural casualties.

It has invited other invidious comparisons.

Charity does indeed begin at home. But how come it was so easy to get out the ranch with a $13 billion check for a swing state like Florida when a hurricane hits in an election year?

Is Jeb Bush in South Asia to inaugurate the Bush 2008 campaign?

When faced with the scale of the disaster, it is indeed sordid to be squabbling about numbers, and who is the kindest of them all.

The American people as individuals are giving in large amounts, many of them precisely because they are embarrassed by their government’s response.

But if the Bush administration does not bask in the full glow of global admiration for the undoubtedly massive part it will certainly play in the relief effort it has only itself to blame.

As the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board pointed out last year, no public relations plan can defend the US from flawed policies.

Not even, and perhaps even especially, one that involves lashing out at critics.

      Ian Williams:  IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com