The Left and the Tsunami

Leave it to the American left to find a villain of the tsunami disaster - not Mother Nature but President Bush. The Washington Post on Wednesday trotted out the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, to pronounce that Mr. Bush was, as the Post conveyed it, "missing an opportunity to demonstrate American benevolence." The New York Times editorialized yesterday that American aid offers were "stingy" and "miserly." Rep. Joseph Crowley, a Democrat of Queens, declared that the Bush administration is "asleep at the wheel." Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan who runs an anti-Bush Web site, wrote, "If Bush were a statesman, he would have flown to Jakarta and announced his solidarity with the Muslims of Indonesia."

Is there no bad thing that can happen on earth for which Mr. Bush is not to blame? Had the president raced immediately to the scene of the disaster, these same voices would no doubt be condemning him for grandstanding and interfering with the relief effort, for exploiting a humanitarian disaster, or for taking a unilateralist approach instead of working with coalitions and international organizations. This is contemporary American leftist illogic distilled to pure hypocrisy: When America tries to depose a dictator like Saddam Hussein who put tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites in mass graves and who was trying to acquire weapons that would allow him to kill tens of thousands of Israelis or Americans, the left complains that America is trying to be a global policeman and needs to learn humility. But when a naturally generated tsunami hits Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, killing hundreds of thousands, it is somehow assumed that the American government must take the lead in the disaster relief efforts.

As David Shribman, the Pulitzer Prizewinner whose column appears weekly in The New York Sun, writes in the adjacent columns, a key difference between Republicans and Democrats these days is that Republicans prefer market solutions and personal responsibility, while Democrats prefer government stewardship and public responsibility. Individual Americans, private charities and businesses are generously rising to the challenge of tsunami relief; with more than $3.5 million raised at Amazon.com, a $35 million gift from Pfizer, $10 million from Coca-Cola, and $3 million each from Merck, Citigroup, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to Forbes. One could praise this extraordinary outpouring and pitch in. Sadly, the paragons of the American left would prefer to bash Mr. Bush than to celebrate American generosity.