We've already contributed eighteen million dollars to the relief effort since Sunday. Of course, since that's only private contributions, and not one inefficient government bureaucracy taking money from the taxpayers to give to some other inefficient government bureaucracy, I guess it doesn't count.

Chuck Simmons has more.

Keep it up! You'll catch up with the British any day now ;)

Rand,
it doesn't matter how much we give, the world community will say it is not enough. So lets send our $$$ and tell them to kiss our collective....

Dave, some of us know the history of this area. I sure hope the US doesn't do to South Asia, what the British Imperialist did.

Hey! No argument here. You'll not get me to apologise for the British Empire and how it worked.

However, given Indonesia is one of, if not the largest Muslim nation in the world, perhaps the US really ought to think about some serious big ass aide, otherwise, the recruiters for Al-Q are going to have a field day.

Although, on that note, I've stopped having to feel upset about the sins of my mother's ancestors when it comes to Imperialism and my wife seems able to forgive us for the Boer War, so perhaps we should let live the sins of the last few centuries and look forward eh?

Dave,

I can agree with the concept of not being blamed for ancesteral sins. I'm just wary of some Europeans complaining about the US both as "Imperialistic" and "not doing enough". I've heard the same people do both.

To be more fair to you, I do wonder if the per capita US aid is really higher than say the British. As I understand it, the Swedish per capita aid is very high, but they also had a high personal loss as the area is a major vacationing area for the citizens of Sweden. So that makes sense.

Personally, I think Roger Simon has a good view in that this disaster shouldn't be made a political football. The people in that area can use what ever aid they can receive at whatever level.

Unfortunately, it is a political issue. Your points about winning the hearts and minds in this situation, to take away proganda for AQ is valid.

Cheers!