Blackfive is covering Team Rubicon's privately-funded and privately-organized relief effort in Haiti. You can read about it here in what is a constantly growing multi-installment series. Team Rubicon's beginning goes back to one person , Jake Wood, a former Marine, who had an idea about how to help in Haiti and decided that he could do more without the encumbrance of bureaucratic and government-run relief efforts. Read more about Jake Wood and his effort here.In part 13 of the Blackfive series, there is an account of an ABC reporter doing a story on Team Rubicon and founder Jake Wood. Wood, instead of gloating for the media, put the ABC reporter to work. Part 10 begins with a photo of foreign aid sitting at the Port-Au-Prince airport and follows that with an account of lost limbs, infection, potential amputations and scarcity of medicine. Part 6 is about the 'kindness of strangers.' These are all first-hand accounts written by doctors, former Marines and others who are directly engaged.
A Team Rubicon can exist at all because the United States is privileged to be a wealthy and charitable nation built on democracy, capitalism and the Judeo-Christian ethic that underlies our belief in the equality and dignity of human beings. Our country's ability to provide rescue and relief to a third-world country like Haiti should be more than enough reason for Americans to celebrate, defend and preserve those institutions and beliefs. Why would we ever want to give all this up for a weakened military, a government-run economy, nationalized health care and an arrogant political class ruling us from Washington, D.C.? Hopefully, we don't and as a nation, we won't.
A Team Rubicon can exist at all because the United States is privileged to be a wealthy and charitable nation built on democracy, capitalism and the Judeo-Christian ethic that underlies our belief in the equality and dignity of human beings. Our country's ability to provide rescue and relief to a third-world country like Haiti should be more than enough reason for Americans to celebrate, defend and preserve those institutions and beliefs. Why would we ever want to give all this up for a weakened military, a government-run economy, nationalized health care and an arrogant political class ruling us from Washington, D.C.? Hopefully, we don't and as a nation, we won't.
Watching a Fox reporter decrying the lack of prompt U.S. aid to Haiti amid a pile of rubble, I thought:" Well, big mouth, why not stop posturing, put down the camera and mike and start digging out the buried survivors yourself?
ReplyDeleteIs the U.S. the world's answer to every crisis - political, military or natural?