Tsunami

I haven't blogged on the tsunami story on the theory that those who are there on the ground have either so much more to say or else so much more to do. My pittance of words can't add much to the ongoing sadness. The political angle -- the Europeans' brief foray into bashing America as "stingy" -- seems trivial. As always, the talking heads miss the reality. Give money, sure, but what do you do with it then? Buy food, buy fresh water, buy medical supplies? Okay, sure, if it's available, but even if it is, where do you get the shipping to get it there, where do you get the manpower to unload it, where do you get trucks to carry it to where it needs to get, what do you do if the roads are washed out too, what do you do if there are no roads to begin with, how do you make sure the medical supplies go to the people who need them and not into funding some slush fund for a tribal warlord or corrupt government bureaucrat (including corrupt UN bureaucrats), what do you do if the hardest hit places are remote from any usable airstrip, what do you do if your available helicopters aren't enough to carry the sheer volume of materiel you need, etc., etc., etc. And... from your cushy New York or Washington or Paris salons, consider... even if everything works perfectly, the world is big and time ticks, ticks, ticks. The reality is that logistics... moving X amount of necessary materiel through Y amount of space in Z amount of time... puts limits on the amount of charity we can give. People are going to die. We wish we could save them all. We can't. It's a natural disaster. No one is at fault, many are acting heroically to save who they can, everyone should stop the blame game. It's an act of God: there's no liability to anyone.

Godspeed.