Neighbor helping neighbor

Some writings by op-ed columnist Matthew Miller that have appeared in the Bangor Daily News have been rather sensible. “My credit card receipt and Bush’s pinched vision” (BDN, Jan. 21) is not one of them.

Miller’s thesis – that the federal government ought to be the conduit through which the nation delivers all its responses to outsizing suffering and need – is based on at least two faulty premises.

The first is that the American response to the Boxing Day tsunami has been inadequate. It has not.

Within hours of the event, a carrier task group was speeding to the scene. On arrival it began immediately to provide relief. This was real assistance too: food for empty bellies, tents to shelter families made homeless, fresh water, medical care and evacuation flights.

In conjunction with other first responders from Japan, Australia and India, the task group’s efforts are in stark contrast to those put forth by the United Nations, which only on Jan. 18 – day 24 of disaster relief – first had two leased helicopters making flights. United Nations “assistance” appears to have consisted mostly of planning to hold meetings, writing assessment reports, and chiding nations to provide more money.

In addition to the work of the naval task force, whose operating costs come out of the Defense Department budget, there is the matter of some $350 million of government aid pledged to tsunami relief.

I don’t know where Miller lives, but around here, $350 million is not exactly chump change. Contributions by corporations, including those profit-driven, much maligned pharmaceuticals, continue to pour in, and will top out in the tens of millions. Private individuals have opened their hearts and their pocketbooks, to the tune of hundreds of millions more. When totals from all sources are tallied, the United States will have contributed more to tsunami relief than the rest of the world’s countries combined.This combination of government, corporate and private aid is exactly as it should be. It should be celebrated, not attacked.

Faulty premise No. 2 is the notion that the federal government can predict natural disasters, crystal-ball their effects, and honestly and accurately “budget” for and respond to future emergencies. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the enormous bureaucracy that would be created just to administer such a scheme, to say nothing of the opportunities to politicize its decision to say, dole out “x” dollars to Turkish earthquake victims and “y” dollars to combat a cholera outbreak in Africa.

Finally, Miller was particularly offended at being invited to contribute by credit card donation to tsunami relief, as though the means by which charity is applied have anything to do with the value or appropriateness of contributing.

He would be undone should he ever come to Maine, where checkout-counter contribution cans for families burned out of their homes and baked bean suppers to benefit someone down on his luck are a fact of life.

Miller would no doubt see such totems as evidence of a failed government system. In Maine, we call it “helping out your neighbor.”

David Dean, a resident of Sangerville, is a retired U.S. Naval officer and a retired teacher at Foxcroft Academy.