Is There Any Solution to Haiti?

I know a lot about a few things. I know a little about a lot of things. And I know nothing about most things. Haiti is in the latter category. I know very little about it, or its history. So when I look at the devastation on television, and hear about its abject poverty, it makes me wonder where do we even start to fix it?

I have always felt there was an insular feeling to the Western Hemisphere. We suffered natural disasters, but not on the scale that we would see in India or Africa or Indonesia. But I was wrong. The loss of life in the poorest country in our neck of the woods is incomprehensible.

I read today that the body count provided by whatever is left of the Haitian government is 150,000 and counting. Mass graves are apparently everywhere. Violence is rampant in the ruins of the streets of Port au Prince. By the grace of God the airport was still functional, but is being run by the United States. Supplies are flowing into the airport, but getting the stuff from the airport to the city is problematic.

In the midst of this tragedy, Fox News showed Haitians showing up for Sunday church services, dressed in their Sunday best, even though the churches are in ruins. Services are being held outside of the churches. Faith is hallmark in this society that gave us voodoo.

How do we begin to fix it? The word “we” is chosen deliberately. The nations of the world are helping, but barely. Some of it is token assistance. Countries like France are claiming the United States is “occupying” Haiti, a former French colony. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is claiming the same thing, but at least he is providing massive amounts of desperately needed diesel fuel…so overlook the rhetoric. China has made some token donations. As always, it is left to the United States. The country and our people are responding generously, as is always the case.

But where do we begin to rebuild what is essentially a failed and corrupt state? Who pays to rebuild a country in a major earthquake zone with structures sufficiently strong enough to withstand any future earthquakes? Or do you simply rebuild only the most basic of brick and concrete structures, leaving these folks vulnerable to future tragedy?

With only a barely functional government to start with, and one that was corrupt to the core, I suggest one of two solutions. Haiti could be made a territory of the United States like Puerto Rico. This would allow our government to spend massive amounts of money in rebuilding the country properly, without worrying about the sensitivities of a corrupt, ineffective regime. It would also help our economy, by providing a mechanism for stimulus that could jump start our economy out of the doldrums.

Alternatively, it could be made a ward of the United Nations. It could become an international zone, and give the UN a chance to show what it could do. Maybe they could move their headquarters from New York, since most of the membership dislikes the United States. Like that is going to happen.

Each of the two solutions may sound flippant, but the task is so daunting, we are going to end supervising it anyway. And given that hurricane season starts in June, we better get some mass shelters built quickly, or the problem could compound itself more than we can imagine.

The Collapse of Institutional Trust

Many churches, including my own, use the month of November as pledge month. It’s that time of year for all of that ungodly stuff like budgets and salaries and denomination assessments. My church is large church by local Protestant standards, with previous budgets sometimes topping out the high six figure range. This year, the drive didn’t go so well. It surfaced in church this morning.

The obvious answer is the economy is bad. But this year my church faced other problems. It started when our minister was accused of several counts of rape (trumped up); and ended with him pleading guilty to a lesser charge of assault (the guy fooled around). Either way, testimony was graphic, and obviously it had a profound effect on our church.

Then ELCA (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and my church’s national affiliation) passed resolutions to allow for actively practicing gay ministers. This is in line with various other Protestant denominations such as the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches. Of course, we were told that our congregation had a role in the decision making process. I don’t remember one, and neither did anyone else. It just sort of appeared in the paper one day.

Both of the above events led to a churning in the nature of the church membership, with many faithful members of the church either moving to different Lutheran churches because of our minister’s peccadilloes, or leaving our ELCA affiliated church altogether because of the gay rights issue.

It also didn’t help that our local Bishop, an interesting woman, is not particularly well liked in our church because of her bully tactics in the philandering minister affair. It wasn’t pretty.

So is it any surprise that our pledge efforts fell substantially short of our budget needs this year? Our new minister, who is a fine man but in a difficult position, did an outstanding job of explaining the church financial issues this morning in his sermon. For the first time in my memory, they handed out copies of the budget in the church service, with specificity. This is something I know that members have been asking about for years. The information was always there for the members to review, but it took a little bit of effort to find it. It should help. I just don’t know how much.

What Pastor Dave failed to realize is this is not simply not a “church” issue. It is a national issue. The problem of lack of trust in our institutions is rising dramatically. Just turn on the news. Look at the disgusting bargaining over the health care reform efforts taking place in our Congress, all held behind closed doors. How unseemly watching billions of dollars passed around to the new Democratic elite in this country, while the rest of us are left to pay…all behind closed doors. Couple that with the Wall Street bailouts and the GM/Chrysler bailouts and the TARP funds and the non-stimulus stimulus package, is it any wonder that trust in our legislative process is not only low…but non-existent.

And the anger is being directed at both political parties, although the antics of the Dems seem to have risen to the forefront. Witness the close race in the Massachusetts’s senatorial race. But comments made to me by my Republican friends reflect a frustration with the political process generally, and the national institutions that support it. They are willing to give money, but not to political parties. Donations are going to ad hoc groups rapidly forming to fill in the void resulting from failure of honest leadership. Bush was bad. Obama is off the charts. A pox on both your houses!

That brings me back to my church. People who are running our institutions need to learn that we are a Democracy. We aren’t here to serve them. They are here to serve us. Whether it is Congress distributing favors to special interest groups at our expense in the health care debate; or a trusted minister getting caught in flagrante delicto with a parishioner; or my church moving away from the conventional wisdom of the membership relating to gay rights (no matter how right or wrong that action may be), if the body politic is opposed to the action, don’t expect their votes or their money.

The arrogance of the squeaky wheels running our institutions is staggering. Don’t spit in the eye of the people you are supposed to serve and expect them to thank you for the honor. It just isn’t going to happen.

Selective Hypocrisy

My pet peeve is hypocrisy. I can’t stand hypocrites. If I were to point to one reason why I am a Republican, it is the hypocrisy of the left. Liberals always have a tendency to want us peasants to do as they say, not as they do.

The Kennedy's want us to find alternative sources of energy, and opposed wind farms Cape Cod. They supported school busing while sending their own children to private schools. Al Gore wants us to drive fuel efficient cars, and then flies around in fuel guzzling private jets. Barack Obama wants income redistribution, yet he and his family have traveled more in opulence in his first year in office than any other president. He has cut off school vouchers to the poor in Washington D.C., preventing other minorities from sending their children to the same school he sends his daughter. That level of hypocrisy is incomprehensible to me.

This latest flap with Harry “the war is lost” Reid is just another example. Comparisons have been made to Trent Lott from 2002 and his comments about electing segregationist Dixie-crats in the 1948 election. (1948? Puhleeze!) Lott got crucified, and the Republicans deserted him droves, while the Democrats have rallied around their own liberal racist. The Republicans should take a lesson in spin control.

I don’t know whether Harry Reid is a racist. A lawyer in my office told me Reid’s comments about the electability of light skin blacks and Negro dialects may be politically incorrect, but most likely factually correct. I am not sure that is true either. One commentator said tonight on television that the comment was more of an affront to the American electorate than to the black minority. He said that Reid’s comments reflected his belief that Americans, as a whole, were racist and would only vote for a light skinned African American…and that, my friends, is one of the basic tenets of liberalism. They are morally superior to us plain folk.

As time goes on, the race card becomes less and less valuable. Harry Reid’s comments reflect the beliefs of his generation…and of some in my generation. But to those under thirty, this probably looks like a quaint anachronism. Who uses the word “Negro” today?

As for me, I look less at what people say and more at what they do. Liberalism, in the collective, is a racist political philosophy of the worst kind. Either by accident or design, they have created a segment in our society that lives a sustenance existence based on government handouts. What some might view as compassion, might be viewed by others as the new plantation where the economically disadvantaged are used as a base for political power. Give them just enough to get their vote, and no more than is necessary. The poverty of these folks is heartbreaking. The lack of hope is downright tragic.

It reminds me of the old Billie Holiday song God Bless The Child:

Rich relations give

Crust of bread and such;

You can help yourself

But don't take too much.

That, my friends it true hypocrisy.

Bush Was Right

As the terrorist threat once again makes its presence known, and President Obama, hopefully, is grudgingly facing the reality of radical Islam, perhaps it is time to finally acknowledge that George Bush was right. Just for a minute, imagine the current Mideast situation with Saddam Hussein still in power in Iraq. Has anyone considered what the Mideast would look like if Bush hadn’t invaded Iraq?

There is no doubt in my mind that Bush and his cohorts trumped up the reason for invading Iraq. The intelligence may have indicated the presence of weapons of mass destruction, but Bush minimally had to have had doubts. He just took the opportunity as the facts presented themselves and ran with them.

I have been writing a Mark Knows It All column for many years now. And I wrote several times back in the day that if you wanted to know why Bush wanted to invade Iraq, all you had to do was look at a map. In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States was facing an untenable Mideast situation. Enemies were everywhere, and right where the oil was. Our only true base of operation in area was in Israel, and that was on the wrong body of water. Outside of Jordon, Egypt and Kuwait, America did not have one friend in the region…and that included the Saudis.

After 9/11, America made a quasi commitment to “free” Afghanistan of the Taliban and Al Qaida. But what good was Afghanistan…the graveyard of empires? No population. No industry. No natural resources, and a piss poor location. If we wanted to make our presence known in the Mideast, we had to do better.

Iraq filled the bill. Here was country with a strong, educated middle class made up of mostly of moderate Moslems. The dictator had managed to keep the jihadist hoy ploy out of the country. It had oil. It had a major port. The Kurdish population in northern Iraq was friendly. To the north of them was Turkey, the most secular of Arab states.

So look at the map now…we have major base in Iraq, a major base in Afghanistan, and our navy to the south. We have surrounded Iran, the granddaddy of whack job Arab (excuse me…Persian) states. At the end of the day, Iran posed then, and poses now, the greatest threat to the United States as a state sponsor of terror which is well on its way to gaining a nuclear weapon. This is a state that could possibly annihilate Israel and parts of Europe with its nuclear capability, and spread that threat to the United States. We are there, with guns pointed right at them.

So, do I think Bush trumped up the WMD excuse to invade Iraq? Yes I do. But I believe his true reasons were well founded on sound principles of regional balance of power politics. If we weren’t in Iraq now, American interests in the Mideast would be tenuous at best. And for all of the American lives lost in the Iraq war, a subsequent war without our current presence in Iraq would result in a loss of catastophic numbers of Americans, as well as Europeans, Israelis and Arabs.

All you have to do is look at the map.