Posted on 09/08/2003 5:14:47 AM PDT by aculeus
The world is now witnessing an exodus from Iraq. But it is not an exodus of refugees whom critics of the war told us would flood in panic across the borders into neighboring states. These simply didn't materialize -- and it tells us much that is good about the postwar realities of the country that they didn't.
So who exactly is abandoning Iraq and its still considerable deficiencies in sanitation, clean drinking water, medicine, medical care and an equitable distribution of food? The answer is astonishing because the deserters are many of those nongovernmental organizations and other groupings organized by governments whose precise moral singularity is that they arrive and stay to dispel human distress when no one else will.
They are leaving, however, their spokesmen tell us, because of the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed 23 people and because the U.S. cannot safeguard their security. It turns out that, for U.N. personnel at least, the first part of the explanation is not quite true: According to a Baghdad dispatch in the Aug. 31 edition of the Boston Globe, they had already been considering "a proposal to evacuate" the capital even before the bombing. And that reflects not the adequacy of American protection, but -- since mostly they were against the war in the first place -- its ethical and political probity. American (and, for that matter, British) protection would compromise, they felt, their mission.
[snip]
It is not only the U.N. that is pulling its employees out of Iraq. So are the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The EU does nothing concretely helpful; its employees can just as well spout off from Brussels. As for the World Bank and the IMF, their lending, such as it is now, can also be done long-distance.
But it is the departure of NGOs, with their relentless pretense to be the conscience of humanity amidst all its depravity, that truly rankles. And they run the gamut: Oxfam, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Save the Children, Swedish Rescue Services, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, Medecins sans Frontieres, Merlin. On Aug. 20, Oxfam said it was staying; by Aug. 28, it was gone. According to the Financial Times, the ICRC's venture in Iraq had been one of the world's largest humanitarian operations. Now two-thirds of its foreign staff is gone, and more are on their way. Save the Children claimed on its Web site to have the "largest presence in Iraq." It has just about vanished. According to The Mercury of Australia, "there are dozens of non-governmental aid and support groups working in Iraq . . . and most of them were studying whether to reduce foreign staff, or already had." A spokesman for Caritas said simply, "most of them are reducing their staff as much as possible" and spiriting them out to safety.
[snip]
Many of the NGOs that are on their way out of Iraq from fear -- if we believe them -- maintain elaborate operations in Liberia, where their employees were until recently probably more at risk than in Iraq. After all, Liberia has been plagued by wanton, random killing. And yet the relief workers soldiered on. Meanwhile, in Iraq -- where whatever mistakes have been made by the occupying authorities and however vexing the internal struggles, there can be no doubt that the U.S. wants to leave the country in a better way than it found it -- the NGOs are leaving in droves.
*** I do not wish to demean the value of relief workers and their contributions. But let's face the truth: Any success in rebuilding Iraq would undermine the widely diffused ideological presumption of relief organizations and many international agencies that powerful nation-states cannot provide the impetus for decent change or even real relief among suffering pre-industrial and pre-modern populations. That is a task, the humanitarian professionals argue, for the practitioners of the post-sovereign ideal -- for them, that is. It is for this reason that these professionals actually engage in what one might call passive sabotage in Iraq, a mean-spirited version of what Thorstein Veblen called "the conscientious withdrawal of efficiency." They do not want the water to flow if the tap is turned by Paul Bremer.
One more telling irony: While the idealistic abandoners of Iraq move on to their safe-haven podiums in Kuwait City and Amman, the entrepreneurial corporations Bechtel and Fluor, drawn to the country by contract for massive construction and oil-field projects, have plans to evacuate no one.
Mr. Peretz is editor in chief of the New Republic.
Copyright 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Sounds just like the strategy and behavior of the DNC.
Prairie
I can't think of a better summary!
Tell that to Mother Teresa.
Altruism, as a personal choice with one's own time and money (and those of like-minded individuals) is hardly a bad thing, and is even a good thing.
What is a bad thing is "professional altruism" of salaried "altruists" who 'do well by doing good' with other people's (often coerced - ie tax) money.
Thanks for noticing!
Great post. Long overdue. I don't quite agree with the "passive" label...they are very active in their sabotage of our efforts.
When the fledgling Iraqi Council needed the 'blessings' of the IMF and World Bank to reassure both corporations and nations that the new Iraq government was worthy, both bodies said no, though they dealt with a mass-murdering monster for decades.
Both Clintons have been dealing with the EU-UN pro-Socialist, anti-American NGOs and nations. Hillary went so far as to pledge the loyalty of the Democratic Party to global socialism - rather than depend on the US military to defend our nation, in an interview in Der Spiegel last June. The AMERICAN press didn't bother to share much of Hillary's European book treason tour with the American people.
Fact is, the NGOs are often big talkers who leave broken promises for our troops to then deal with. Both the Red Cross and Amnesty Int'l protested the treatment of POWS in Iraq by our troops. These NGOS were more concerned with the men who raped and murdered their neighbors, than the men and women who voluntarily risk their lives to save strangers in a foreign land.
Too bad that interview wasn't posted on FR ... or was it?
However, she tried to point out that many (she would say ALL, but I will merely say 'many') of the altruists in the world secretly gloat over the pain and suffering of people. They want to be needed. They need the world to be full of poor people. They will adopt "forest protection plans" that result in catastrophic wildfires -- then they will help the survivors to lobby for more funding for "forest protection".
I'm willing to bet that many of the people connected with "humanitarian" causes in Iraq are leaving precisely with the hope that disaster will occur BECAUSE they leave. They are hoping to CAUSE a disaster -- because then they can come back as heroes. Many (not all) altruists live for that stuff.
Nice work if you can get it. College grads today want to go straight from apprentice to master.
Our troops first went into Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people almost six months ago. We have yet to see any major press and/or Congressional investigations into the activities of these mostly socialist, anti-American, pro-Saddam, so-called 'humanitarian' NGOs.
8NGOs - the New World Order [Good]~ Washington Dispatch | 6/19/03 | Helen and Peters Evans 8 Mark Steyn: Come on over the water's lovely ~ The Sunday Telegraph ^ | 6/01/03 | Mark Steyn
8 Saddam's Cash [NGOs, Press and Pols silenced by Saddam for '30 pieces of silver']
~ The Weekly Standard ^ | May 5, 2003 | Stephen F. Hayes
8 THE REAL SCANDAL OF IRAQI RELIEF [NGO mischief-makers in Iraq]
~ New York Post ^ | 5/11/03 | JONATHAN FOREMAN
8 Saddam Stole Billions From U.N. ~ ABC News | 5/03
8 Where Are the Human Rights Groups? ~ Richard Pollock | FrontPageMagazine.com | 4/03
8 Finally! The TRUTH about POWs in Iraq [Chief's reliable first-hand account]
They need to feel superior. That's what makes them insufferable.
"They shuttle across the globe, mingling with their own kind - other SUV users - and bringing with them the values of the mother country, or the mother bureaucracy. Like many imperialists, they're well-meaning: they see their charges as helpless and dependent, which happy condition has the benefit of justifying an ever-growing aid bureaucracy in perpetuity. It will be very destructive for Iraq if the tentativeness of the American administration in Baghdad allows the ambulance-chasers of the NGOs to sink their fangs into the country."
Considering that 60% of Iraqis were on the UN dole before the war, I'd say they already had their fangs well sunk in, making our job of re-education all the more difficult. A "welfare-to-work" program writ large.
"America should seek "a secure and solid foundation" for relations with Europe, instead of "relying only upon our [U.S.] military strength." .. "for eight years we were on the right course to a globalized and integrated world - which is coming, one way or the other." ...Not only is a "globalized and integrated world" inevitable, it is a foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party...Der Spiegel concludes: As Europeans become more familiar with Clinton and her views, their impact will be felt as they bring money and influence to her or a like politician's campaign...The socialist European expectation will be that a Democratic victory will bring into power a U.S. government more to the liking of one-world European politicians. ~ Hillary Clinton Der Spiegel interview, June 17, 2003. .
*Hillary Clinton Attacks Bush, U.S. Intelligence Services in Overseas Interview
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