Foreign assistance efforts met ungracious response

1 May 2007 // Even as New Orleans continues to struggle to drag itself up from the mud and destruction almost two years now since it was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina there are new reports on how the response to that disaster was mangled by the Bush administration.

Americans are all-too familiar with the delayed rescue and aid response from FEMA and the lack of coordination with state officials when Katrina hit the city and the Gulf Coast. A new report issued over the weekend by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a public interest group in Washington, D.C., showed the administration was bungling the diplomatic end of things as well, rejecting or putting on hold a vast outpouring of offers of manpower, supplies and expertise from other countries.

Some of the incidents - such as the rejection of an offer from Greece for the use of cruise ships for housing of Katrina victims - were reported at the time, but the new study looked at 10,000 pages of cables, telegraphs and e-mails from U.S. diplomats under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Those cables and communications showed that the United States declined 54 of the 77 recorded aid offers from three of its closest allies. While the world stepped up with more than $854 million in cash and oil offers of aid, less than five percent of that money “ just $40 million -“ has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction. Some of the aid was redirected to charitable groups and some still remains tangled in red tape and restrictions on how it can be spent.

While the directive from the White House was to assure countries their aid offers were providing "practical help and moral support" for the victims, diplomats knew many of the offers were being deferred or delayed. And even some of the aid that was accepted was mishandled and ruined.

The report said that shipments of medical supplies from Italy that included medicine, gauze and other supplies was unused, exposed to the elements and ultimately discarded. According to the report, State Department Officials worried over whether to tell Italy or not.

"Tell them we blew it," wrote one official, and then, "The flip side is just to dispose of it and not come clean. I could be persuaded."

America's thanks-but-no-thanks response was an abysmal way for our nation to react to honest efforts of assistance. We wonder if such offers will come the next time a disaster hits our shores or one of our cities.

More is the pity, the assistance is still needed. While Mardi Gras is back, the French Quarter is reopened and the city now has as many restaurants as it did pre-Katrina, that recovery has not spread to all areas of the city.

Over the weekend, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and the Rev. Jesse Jackson led hundreds of marchers to the still un-repaired and crumbling houses in the Lower 9th Ward that was devastated by the levee breach. "The waters have subsided, but the abandonment continues," said Rev. Jackson.

Nagin told the marchers they were sending a "message to the nation that people in New Orleans are still here. We're still fighting for our land. We're fighting for our recovery. We want the resources to flow much faster."

We doubt that they care much if it came from foreign lands. The post-Katrina recovery effort remains mired in delays, insurance disputes and even court fights over whether to rebuild some housing projects or redo them in a different manner.

Some of those answers don't come easy. But we hope in the painful post-mortem of this botched recovery that the State Department is also re-evaluating its role and responsibilities to facilitate foreign assistance so that America can accept help when help is needed and not be so ungracious about doing so.