haiti

The events surrounding the earthquake in Haiti have given me a lot to think about lately. A few of those thoughts are below.

I have heard wildly varying figures on the number of people who have died, but even the most conservative numbers are breath-taking. Even if a low-ball number of 35,000 people is used that is still ten times the number of people who died in 9/11. Given the toll on those who survived as well it is impossible for me to fathom the human toll this earthquake has taken. It is hard to imagine a worse place on dry land that a major earthquake could have struck.

While pretty much everyone is moved by the humanity of the situation in Haiti, I think that most people are trained to value people of their own nationality a bit more than people of other nationalities. I am always reminded of this when some tragedy occurs on foreign soil and one of the first questions people have is how many Americans were impacted. I am sure that this sort of thing is not unique to Americans, but since I live in the U.S. that is what I notice.

One of the most moving stories I heard was of a two-year-old boy who was rescued after two days under the rubble. NJ is currently three and CD is currently one. I cannot imagine having either stuck for any extended time in a situation like that. It must have been pure torture not only for him, but for his parents as well. I don't want to think of all of those two-year-olds for whom the ending wasn't so happy.

A lot of hay has been made about cruise ships docking on Haiti ports after the devastation and continuing to provide use of private beaches. While on the face of it this sounds horrible, if this is something that locals rely on for income to survive, then it would seem like stopping the ships from docking would be more cruel than carrying on as they have been doing. I certainly do not know the whole story, though.

Having watched my share of The 700 Club as a kid, I am not surprised with the comments that Pat Robertson made about Haiti or why he would not have thought them so inflammatory before he spoke them. That does not change how stupid the comments were, though, or excuse the lack of an apology. Unless he had a direct word from God somehow to support what he said, which he is not claiming he did, then he is essentially filling the role of Job's friends in implying that this happened because the people of Haiti got on God's bad side. I really wish that Robertson was not one of the modern voices of Christianity. How does he keep getting an audience? His main role in life right now appears to be to drive people away from God.

Finally, because I don't want to end with a discussion of Pat Robertson, I would like to conclude with the question of how can we have such a destitute country so geographically close to our own country and do so little about it? I know neither Cuba nor Mexico, which are both closer, are rich, but my understanding is that Haiti is in a completely different league from the other poor countries in this region. The U.S. has also arguably had more opportunity to influence Haiti than most of its other neighbors as well. Maybe we are just concerned that we would turn it into a Somalia or something like that if we offered too much aid? Haiti doesn't appear to have the same tribal issues as Somalia, though, so it's a mystery to me.