5.15.2008

Democracies Don't Let People Die

Wonder Land - WSJ.com: "Next to Hillary Won't Quit, the least surprising news yesterday morning was the headline: China Rejects Quake Aid. Reasons on offer were that China wanted to prove its 'self-reliance,' difficult roads, blah, blah, blah. A virtual army of high-tech, highly skilled relief teams are ready to go into Wenchuan County, where mountains literally have fallen onto villages.
Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger speaks to Kelsey Hubbard about why the Burmese and Chinese governments have rejected global aid in the wakes of their deadly disasters. (May 15)

Meanwhile, even as a second storm headed toward the same Burmese people hit by last weekend's cyclone, its military junta, a government of almost cartoonlike cruelty, continued to tell the helping world to get lost. The U.N. is now talking of a death toll exceeding 100,000. We know that number to be unnecessary because India warned Burma about the cyclone two days before it hit.

When a China or Burma and its people are in the throes of such catastrophe, one is loath to make invidious comparisons."