Am I Heartless?.......or What?
You know, the disaster in Asia is a terrible thing but I ask you, other than the number of dead, didn't we have several major disasters hit us in the very recent history? We had hurricanes go through our Southern States and wipe out a lot of structures? We lost Billions of dollars worth of just about everything, including crops. Oil rigs were shut down in the Gulf of Mexico, pushing the price of crude oil to Americans higher.
The reason we didn't suffer the great loss of life is because we have developed the technology along with the rest of our innovation that put in place a warning system to alert us of coming disasters and we react in a way that loss of life is help to a minimum.
The reasons behind many of these Asian countries having such a great loss of life is that even though the warnings were given, that a great event had occurred in the Pacific Ocean and that danger was imminent, some of these Asian Countries failed to warn their people for fear of loosing the tourist dollar. They had no system of their own in place to detect such a problem. They would rather build new beaches for tourists to visit. They would rather line their Monarchy’s pockets with green-backs than to build systems to protect them selves.
The U.N. gets on OUR national television networks and claims the U.S. is stingy when it came to acting upon this disaster by not sending more MONEY.... Note, they didn't say anything about supplies just MONEY. Bush is bashed for riding his dirt bike on his ranch and not jumping off and doing something right then and there but, Kofi Annan extends his skiing vacation in Colorado and nothing is said about and he say nothing about it for several days after the fact.
The U.S. pledged some $35 million for starters of OUR tax dollars to aid in the relief program, then France steps in and makes it sound like an auction to whom the spoils of the rebuilding contracts will be given. They brought in a new bid of $52 million and then boasted about it. Did someone forget to tell them that something like $80 million of private American money was also added to the pot bring our total (for starters) to roughly $115 million. The EU has made a pledge of something like $7 million and that includes, I think, 17 countries. Hell Australia did better than that by them selves as did Japan. Kofi Annan should take some of that money skimmed off the "Oil for Food" program and do all the rebuilding. What the hell good is the U.N. anyway?
Where is China in this mess? They have openly claimed they will be the largest world economy and military. Russia is right in there with them helping them to pull this off. Where are these people,s support? I'll tell you where, it's right there in their own countries taking care of their own local welfare. That's how the U.S. better start dealing with the rest of the world. The only time we are a good country is when we are handing out money to others who are too damn lazy or to greedy lining their own pockets with cash to set up the necessary systems to protect their citizens.
How many world dollars came to America after the 9/11 attacks? How many world dollars came to Amerce when the hurricanes hit our shores? Who came to our rescue to search the rubble for bodies? That takes care of the East Coast tragedies now let's look at the fires we've had recently. Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, and California, hundreds of thousands of acres charred black, homes and lives lost, where was the outside support? The lumber that could have been harvested was turned into nothing but burnt match sticks; you can thank the environmentalists for that. NOPE, no outside money came in for that.
We were attacked by Japan and they turned Pearl Harbor into an underwater grave yard, did they help rebuild that after the war? NO!! But what did we do, we built Japan back better than they would ever have done. How about Europe, after the war we rebuilt them, now we are doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. We send billions of TAX dollars to Africa to fight AIDS but do they care enough for their own people to do anything? The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan if from West Africa, Kumasi, Ghana to be exact, how much money has he or the U.N. applied to the fight of AIDS on HIS own continent?
I feel it's high time that we tell the rest of the world to go to hell. If they are unwilling to protect and support themselves, well it's just too damn bad. Their people will have to take up those issues with their Governments. It's time to tell the U.N. and the E.U. we will not compete with them as we know we are better at everything we set our minds to do. It's funny, we are the youngest of the nations of the world and yet we are the strongest and most innovative, but that won't last much longer at the rate we are letting the rest of the world walk (STOMP) all over us. You can't tell me that only the brightest minds left their home lands to come to America
We have cars, planes, and electricity from thinkers and tinkerers, all Americans. These people weren't rocket scientists; we didn't have rockets back then. We invented the steam engine and the gas engine and then went on to invent computers.
I sent out what was supposed to be a joke, not long ago. I had to do with a class reunion or something like that where one of the young people was trying to mock the elder. The youngster chided, "We have computers, rockets, planes... etc, it went on, and the youngster asked what they did back in the old days, since they didn't have these devices. The elder replied, "Nope! We didn't have all of those things so WE invented them, what was his generation going to give to the Country?" Now I ask what are these other countries doing to improve themselves? Not a damn thing because they know that the good old U.S. of A. will come to their rescue if something happens. Maybe it's time we stop and make them stand on their own 2 feet. If Africa doesn't give a damn about their AIDS problem, why should we?
I'll step off my soap box for now and hope you have a great day!
Greg W.
of the United States of America
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1311627/postsThankfully someone did point out that Americans didn't invent all the things he thinks we did and another pointed out that countries like Sri Lanka weren't in a position to offer help to the US and that we really didn't need cash donations from cash poor countries anyway, but still.
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