January 12, 2005

Tsunami Relief: "A Very American Thing To Do"

Chuck Simmins, keeper of the increasingly awesome The Stingy List, reports that donations for tsunami disaster relief by American individials and businesses has topped $615 million. And that's in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and hand's on assistance by the military being donated by Uncle Sam. Simmins, by the way, took some heat from Lefty bloggers for noticing out loud that the very long list of private sector donations was rather lacking in cash from the Hollywood crowd (with a few exceptions). He fires back here. I love this part, where Simmins, an EMT and former firefighter, writes:

When things go badly wrong, I'm one of the people who turn and run to the sound of the gunfire. That's a very American thing to do. We saw that when the murders of September 11 were committed. And we have seen it again with tsunami relief. There aren't many people from Norway sweating and bleeding in South Asia trying to save lives and rebuild countries after the tsunami ... Hell, the Canadians took two weeks to even find their way there.

Only America, ONLY AMERICA, sends its men and women on a moment's notice to the worst places on earth to make things better. Where is the vaunted French carrier? In port. Where is the mighty Russian Navy? In port. Where is the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Navy? In port.