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Originally Posted by Alladin Sane
American citizens dug deep into their wallets, donating some $1.78 billion to the relief effort in Asia--dwarfing the contributions of other developed nations.
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This statement is misleading. It is a not-true statement. It is either ignorant or an attempt to lie.
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Originally Posted by pan6467
And because the US gave less to an international disaster we're a bad greedy nation?????
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This statement is also misleading and false. It is in response to a post where I made no such statement. By placing it there, it implies I am saying that. Classic straw man -- invent a lie, claim your opponent said it, then prove your opponent is incorrect.
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Originally Posted by me
I was only attempting to measure direct tsunami relief.
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Feel free to provide your own numbers. I'd love to see them.
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Originally Posted by Pan4647
We ship more money overseas and into causes than we probably give our own citizens. I have a feeling sad to say more money went to the Tsunami than to NO/and the Gulf area. Which to me is sad because a country must take care of it's own before they can even think of helping another.
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Your feeling is, as far as I am aware, without basis or ground.
By September 28th, the American Red Cross alone had raised 1 billion dollars towards Katrina relief. Notice the sum total of American aid to Tsunami damaged nations was less than 2 billion dollars, from all sources.
The US federal government allocated 51.8$
BILLION dollars to Katrina relief.
Dispite your feeling to the contrary, the US response to Katrina and the US response to the Tsunami are in completely different leagues.
Next, let us examine the amount of human suffering in the two events. Human deaths will serve as a proxy for this value. You wouldn't expect the international humanitarian response to a stubbed toe to be the same as the response to an event that killed 100 people -- the scale of the disaster should be taken into account.
The total deaths in Katrina where about 1,000 to 2,000 (via recall). The total deaths from the Tsunami is about 212,000 (via CNN).
So, saying that the Tsunami was a 100 times larger disaster than Katrina isn't all that unreasonable.
Foreign response:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna...ricane_Katrina
the foriegn reponse, given the relative sizes of the disasters, is huge compared to the Tsunami. Destroyers, multiple 100s of millions of dollars, disaster relief teams, etc.
Not all the resources offered where accepted by the USA.
Pan, your feelings about this issue are without basis. I would advise looking at the size of the numbers involved.