This was generous:
The oil-rich Persian Gulf state of Kuwait said Sunday it will donate $500 million in aid to U.S. relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
The offer is the largest known put forward since the hurricane ravaged Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and follows a $100 million aid donation from the emir of a Mideast neighbor, Qatar.
Kuwait’s energy minister said his country would provide “oil products that the disaster-stricken states need in addition to other humanitarian aid.”
“It’s our duty as Kuwaitis to stand by our friends to lighten the humanitarian misery and as a payback for the many situations during which Washington helped us through the significant relations between the two friendly countries,” Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed Al Sabah said in a statement carried by Kuwait’s official news agency, KUNA.
Kuwait is one of America’s closest Mideast allies and owes its 1991 liberation from Iraqi occupation forces to a U.S.-led coalition that drove Saddam Hussein’s army out.
You know, in retrospect, one thing to be grateful for was that other than a few outbursts, there seemed to be relatively little of the ‘where is all the foreign aid like in the tsunami’ catcalls from folks on my side of the aisle.
We seem to have saved all of the sharp knives to stick in the backs of our domestic political opposition.
SEARP
From what I can tell, we’re not really accepting any foreign aid anyway, or at least not emergency services.
Demdude
I’m not sure of what excess pumping capacity is available in the ME, if they really wanted to help us, screw the cash.
The price of crude has jumped even further due to the loss of wells in the gulf. If they turned up the spigot, they could (excuse the unfortunate term) flood the market with crude. This would help at least hold the price, if not drive down the price per barrel.
Obviously this wouldn’t help our pipeline or refining situation, but it would help. I’m also sure that any savings would be vastly greater than the amount of cash currently on the table.
Jane Finch
That could be because there have been tons of offers of foreign aid but none have been accepted to date.
ppGaz
Everybody needs at least one rich, oppressive oligarchy to be their friend.
Luckily, we have several.
Jim Caputo
Didn’t we spend more than $20 billion to repel the Iraqi invasion in Kuwait? I think they could’ve done better than a half billion for us.
How do these “oil products” get distributed? Since they were donated, will they be made available free of charge, or will some oil company simply get free supply which they’ll then sell to already suffering people at current prices?
dlnevins
I’ve seen a bit of it (and not just from your side of the isle, either), but in every case the person was shouted down for making a manifestly silly comment. It’s nice to know common sense prevails on occasion.
(Help in the form of emergency services, such as search and rescue teams, the loan of large-scale water purification units, etc. is one thing. But as one of the world’s wealthier countries, we shouldn’t need cash from other nations. Better the money goes to places such as Thailand, where it’s genuinely needed.)
Zifnab
Hey, Kuwait ain’t half bad. And it’s the perfect example of a country in the Middle East that knows how to return kindness with kindness. Here we have a country that walked out of a Middle East war loving us more than hating us and that’s a damn rare thing. If we could make friends with all our Arab affiliates like we could make friends with Kuwait, I think the world would be a happier, safer, even more democratic place.
And while I admit I don’t know alot about Kuwait, it’s definately one of the more democratically inclined of the Middle Easter nations.
Nelson Muntz
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ku.html
Suffrage:
adult males who have been naturalized for 30 years or more or have resided in Kuwait since before 1920 and their male descendants at age 21
note: only 10% of all citizens are eligible to vote; in 1996, naturalized citizens who do not meet the pre-1920 qualification but have been naturalized for 30 years were eligible to vote for the first time
jobiuspublius
This reminds me. I spoke to a Marine, rank less than sargeant. His leutenant(oh, the spelling …) told him that “we” got 10 years of sweet oil contracts for the effort.
Gary Farber
“You know, in retrospect, one thing to be grateful for was that other than a few outbursts, there seemed to be relatively little of the ‘where is all the foreign aid like in the tsunami’ catcalls from folks on my side of the aisle.”
I saw quite a few of them, myself, in the first few days. Lileks sneering at the French on sheer knee-jerk was not one of his finer moments.
pleonastic piranha
bitching about foreign aid could only be done by uninformed twerps — lots of countries have offered help, even those who can hardly afford it (like countries still dealing with the tsunami), and cuba (*snicker* — i’d like to see that offer accepted; in my dreams). CNN has a list.
some foreign help has been accepted — canada is sending medical supplies, aside from resue workers already on the scene, divers, and ships.
Slovin
$16 billion, and we payed it for it all in cash in 1991. We’re really grateful for US help in 1991, and I believe the $500 million is a small gesture in return.
That’s a bit oudated news. Kuwaiti women have been granted rights a few months ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait
You can’t really put Kuwait in the same basket as other countries in the Persian gulf or the middle east in general. Most Arabs despise Kuwaitis for being such a strong ally of US.
Remember in 2003 that when Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other countries refused to help US in the war against Saddam, Kuwait was the only launch pad for the US.