Compulsory "charity".(Correction, Please!)

ITEM: In an editorial entitled, "Are We Stingy? Yes," the December 30 New York Times agreed with the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who characterized the U.S. as "stingy" in terms of giving foreign aid, specifically aid to the tsunami victims. "The American aid figure ... is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid," the Times said.

CORRECTION: It is easy to be generous with other people's money, especially if you are a UN bureaucrat who gets nearly a quarter of his salary from American taxpayers. The UN official in question, Norway's Jan Egeland, presides over the "distribution of aid and money conscripted from Americans," commented columnist Patrick Buchanan, "while denouncing them as 'stingy' and preening as a great humanitarian. He is a dispensable parasite who insults the nation responsible for his exalted lifestyle."

Another "international humanitarian," Clare Short, berated American government efforts for supposedly undercutting the United Nations. Short, Britain's former International Development Secretary, said the U.S. effort to coordinate tsunami aid "sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the U.N.... Only really the U.N. can do that job. It is the only body that has the moral authority." Yes, she's talking about the ethics of the folks who ran the Oil-for-Food-for-Dictators program.

Meanwhile, most American aid is not being "counted" in our favor--such as the $6 million a day the Pentagon is spending for a fleet of U.S. vessels and aircraft as well as at least 13,000 military personnel. By the first week of January, while international bureaucrats were ...