Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about Haiti. CNN has been reporting a lot about it recently, including a bunch of reports of its reporters showing up there and “discovering” that things are still very bad. Not that long ago, when Haiti was all the talk, I mentioned that once Americans got over the initial shock of the disaster, we’d go back to not caring about that island nation again. And sure enough, that’s where we are.
But it is kind of important to understand why that might be. The CNNs of the world want us to think the problem is inherent in us, as if we’re responsible for the horrible conditions there. But fortunately, that’s not really the case. While we are often guilty of not caring about a certain geographical location (East Timor, Somalia, South Central LA, or wherever), this time it’s not really something to put squarely on the shoulders of those of the USA. What no one wants to face is the possibility that the problem might be a lot closer to home…their home, not ours.
Haiti is one of those places, like Liberia, where a lot of people outside of the area really care, but once we start caring, the people themselves don’t seem to care about their own plight, often neglecting all attempts to help them, either by destroying their own farmland for short term gains, or by continuing to support destructive leaders who tend to keep them locked in their plight of despair.
Americans care about people who are suffering, but there’s only so much we’re going to do before we start to think that the problem is yours, not ours. I’m sorry to say that but after awhile, we start to treat a wayward country as a family member who just can’t seem to get his crap together, who keeps knocking off liquor stores, even though we keep getting him a job at the Quickie Mart. Lots of money was raised for Haiti, but immediately after this process started, we started to see the old ways of corruption falling right back into place, so that the aid wasn’t getting to the people who needed it, but was going into the coffers of people who tend to make things worse. I’m sorry, but we’re not willing to keep giving money to destructive dictators who hold out their hands, “promising” to fix things even though they never do. Or corrupt leaders who don’t seem to understand that eventually they have to stop taking EVERYTHING and trying to do something to help their own people.
Haiti has been a cesspool ever since they cast off the reins of slavery while the rest of the world was still embracing the evil that was going on back then. It would be nice to think things might have gotten better, but they haven’t. Unfortunately, the rest of the world started to notice them again because there was an environmental disaster that cast them into the light again. Unfortunately, they didn’t do anything better AFTER it happened, so it makes it really hard for people to want to do anything when the people themselves aren’t interested in helping themselves.
It’s a lot like Somalia where the west showed up to help feed the people and then found the pirate, criminal element that was there waiting for us. If we show up with all intentions of helping and then find that the people there are more interested in playing local games and hoping to profit off of the outsiders, we’re out of there, and we’re not coming back to help. You notice how few Americans are interested in helping Somalia today? Well, that’s what happens.
It’s why North Korea is quickly pushing itself into a no help situation. The west isn’t interested in helping when the people are stupid or acting stupid. And that’s what’s happening in Haiti. Sorry, but we’re not interested in helping if the people themselves are going to act stupid. Yeah, a lot of people are suffering, but we’re not the world’s police, no matter how much George W. Bush tried to make that happen.
I’ll be honest. I hate what’s going on in Haiti. But at the same time, there’s only so much energy you can expend before you start to realize that no amount of energy is going to make things change.