What Did Jan Really Say?
I've seen comments around the blogosphere which indicate that people think Jan Egeland said that Americans are stingy. That isn't actually what he said. He was talking (a) about governments, not citizens, and (b) about many countries, not just the U.S.
If, actually, the foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2 percent of the gross national income, I think that is stingy, really," he said. "I don't think that is very generous.
You can certainly criticize what he did say. In 2003, the U.S. gave $15 billion in foreign aid, which is almost twice as much in absolute terms as Japan, the next largest contributor of foreign aid. The top 22 countries combined gave $68.5 billion in foreign aid.
However, please don't criticize him for something he didn't say. He never said that American citizens were stingy. He didn't address private charitable contributions in any way. In other words, unless you're a member of the government who has policy-making responsibility for foreign aid commitments, he wasn't talking about you.
Comments
If I say "teams with the highest payroll shouldn't be able to get the best free agent", I'm talking about the Yankees, not George Steinbrenner or the GM.
I haven't typed one word about that dude or his comment, but it was obviously a shot fired at the developed nations, especially the one that gives millions (and a home) to the UN. The operative word was "countries".
When he says "countries" and America is obviously at the top of the list of "countries".....well, I can do the linkage on my own. That said, I'd rather the citizens themselves send over the cash (as we're doing from the Amazon tallies I've been reading about) and the countries send over the actual resources, like our aircraft carrier.
All told, the guy said something pretty stupid, if you ask me, but I didn't get hot & bothered over it (I considered the source & shrugged it off).
Posted by: Ricky | December 29, 2004 06:29 PM
He was obviously talking about developed nations, and the U.S. was one of them. But he was talking about the governments, not about its citizens. So if someone says, "Well, I donated money to the Red Cross, so much for Americans being stingy", which are the types of comments I'm referring to, they are responding to something Egeland never said.
Posted by: Lesley | December 29, 2004 07:07 PM
Oh, okay. Gotcha.
Posted by: Ricky | January 3, 2005 05:52 AM