Haiti – Robertson and Chavez and others (Watt Thoughts)

Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake a week ago. The US and others have jumped in with aid to survive the effects of the hurricane with the US leading many of the efforts there. A smaller airport that suffered damage and a destroyed port have hampered these effort. Even before the earthquake Haiti has been a very poor and devastated country.

Three people have not helped the matter any; US politicians, Pat Robertson and Hugo Chavez.

The US politicians have been trying to fly in there to get their pictures taken in the destruction to show their concern for Haiti. However the airport can only service a limited number of flights each day and there are more relief planes than landing slots available. To fly a plane in there with politicians and not relief crews (doctors, medicine, recovery experts, etc) means one less plane that could carry that stuff in there. Besides just being able to land there is limited space for paring the planes. If the politicians think need photo about Haiti go to their airport and helped load plane with supplies and get their picture helping load the plane and then get out of the way.

Pat Robertson has come on and blamed the earthquake on something that happened 220 years ago. How the Haitians got their independence and has his story on it. If the story was correct, there is no reason that God would be punishing them with an earthquake 220 years later. The Haitian people have been suffering in misery for many, many years so they don’t need more of that.

Hugo Chavez has sent little to help his fellow people living in the Americas. He has come out claiming that the US caused the earthquake by testing some super new weapon. Instead of blaming it in the US it would be a lot more helpful if he sent relief material. Chavez claimed for years that Bush was the devil and now appears to have decided that Obama is just the devil’s partner.

We could use less people and behavior like the Robertson, Chavez and the politicians. We need more of the Christian missionary type people and UN relief people that were there already providing relief and trying to improve the lives of the Haitians. Some of the deaths were these people, the international head of the Methodist church died in the quake, and many UN staff who were there doing the same. The survivors of these changed from long term poverty relief to immediate quake relief.

We need to try to improve the conditions of the Haitian people so that they have responsible good government that can lead them to posterity, just as the other side of the island is a much better living spot. Give your money to groups that will spend it on relief, not themselves and continue to pray for relief and improvement for the Haitians. If you have abilities they can use in Haiti consider going now or in the future to help, but not just to get seen. The world needs to unite here to get the relief, not just certain countries. This is not a problem we will solve and can ignore in 6 months.

Dwight