Party of 1

The Wall Street Journal offers space to two representatives of Doctors Without Borders in Haiti for an eyewitness report in the form of an op-ed commentary.

Dr. Jeanne Cabeza is medical coordinator of Doctors Without Borders in Haiti. “I see some people and can’t believe they are alive. They have extreme crush injuries, partial amputations, and open fractures. A mother helped me bandage her infant, whose left hand was gone. It took an hour, but once the baby was bandaged, she was calmer. I can’t imagine what the mother is going through…. A young man, about 23, had a traumatic crush injury. He was looking all right, young and strong, but his leg was dead and had to come off. If you can remove gangrenous limbs, you can save people. But we couldn’t, and the next day he died of sepsis.”

Michelle Chouinard, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti, journeyed to the collapsed Trinité Hospital on foot, immediately after the earthquake. “Trinité Hospital was one of the only trauma care centers in Port-au-Prince, and the people arriving for care panicked somewhat when they saw the hospital was destroyed…. A Haitian colleague—a gifted doctor—was among those we freed. But he died shortly after being pulled from the wreckage. That hit the team hard.”

Imagine the scenes being played out thousands of times over, and I’m sure you’ll want to pony up, via Internet, cellphone, or 800-number.

Wait a minute — oh, that’s right, I forgot — Limbaugh doesn’t want us to….

The New York Times quotes a New York City firefighter, a veteran of Ground Zero, now deployed to Port-au-Prince: ““At least in 9/11, you had a place to go to get away from the hole…. This is like 9/11 on the whole island of Manhattan.”

An NYC police detective is also on the scene in Port-au-Prince. ““After Sept. 11, the way the world reached out to us, we have an obligation now…. Even if Haiti didn’t send anything monetarily in 2001, I’m sure they sent their prayers to us and it’s our turn now.” That presents an interesting contrast with the views of a certain well-known talk-radio personality….

And, yes, I’m aware that a certain Venezuelan strongman shouldn’t be let off the hook, either….

“Haiti has some of the weakest property protections in the world, as well as some of the most burdensome business regulations.” Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, Tuesday.

“Haiti has a notoriously weak state—the sort that couldn’t enforce building codes, or prevent the deforestation that has left the soil unable to deflect routine flooding.” Dayo Olopade, The Root, same day.

I suppose these statements are not flat-out contradictory, since they both make reference to the weakness of the Haitian state, in one respect or another….

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal brings a thoughtful essay by Kevin Rozario, on the prospects for post-earthquake Haiti to benefit from a version of Joseph Shumpeter’s “creative destruction.” In the case that, from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake to the 1871 Chicago fire to the post-World War II German “economic miracle,” natural and man-made disasters have occasioned economic dynamism. To a critical eye, it looks like a perverse dynamic, as though the recommended way to bring about an economic boom is to have your territory blown to smithereens. But, would it have been preferable to leave postwar Germany in ruins?

Rozario notes that little of the creative side of the destruction has been seen in post-Katrina New Orleans, where many flooded neighborhoods remain barely resettled. If New Orleans — which, after all, is a relatively poor city in a rich country — cannot be rebuilt quickly, what can the future hold for Haiti?

Rozario: “On the day after the earthquake, James Roberts, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, laid out an expansive vision of the prospect this disaster presented for a ‘bold and decisive’ U.S. intervention to impose the democratic and economic reforms that would turn Haiti into a stable state and trading partner. Disaster, once again, figures as agent of progress.” Neoliberalism, we may suppose, is to be proposed as the cure for Haiti’s ills. Indeed, in a recent overnight press review I mentioned this column by David Brooks, which emphasized the cultural hurdles to economic development in Haiti. Progressives probably will regard this commentary as a species of the “blaming the victim” genre, although surely its argument is more subtle than most such polemic.

Rozario, to his credit, did not neglect to mention the progressive retort to the neoliberal narrative. “The country—impoverished over the centuries by slavery, the extraction of its resources to imperial metropolises, international occupations, dictatorships—has been dependent on IMF loans since the 1980s, but these have come with strings attached. Haiti, once self-sufficient in rice production, was forced to remove barriers to heavily subsidized American rice. This led to the decimation of local farming and the migration of country-dwellers to the city in search of work, contributing to overcrowding in Port-au-Prince. With recent escalating world food prices, Haitians, unable to grow their own food, have sunk deeper into poverty, locked into a cycle of dependency that contributed to the scale of the destruction and loss of life in the wake of the earthquake.” Just the sort of thing that Limbaugh and his dittoheads do not want to hear, refusing as they do to contribute to earthquake relief….

As of Thursday evening, the latest reports indicate that, with the port facilities of Port-au-Prince largely destroyed, relief supplies can enter Haiti only through the relatively unscathed airport, which reportedly is overwhelmed. With the critical third day since the earthquake now upon us, one can only agree with the sentiment expressed Thursday morning by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in its Review & Outlook feature (“Haiti’s Tragedy”), wishing “godspeed to the armies of relief headed for Haiti’s desperate shore.”

Under the circumstances, it might seem petty to take too much of a nitpicking approach to the paper’s commentary. Nevertheless, in polemics, everything is grist for the mill, and there is an important point to be made with scrutiny of the following sentences from this editorial, which, I would argue, carries just the slightest tincture of ideology: “The earthquake is also a reminder that while natural calamities do not discriminate between rich countries and poor ones, their effects almost invariably do…. The difference is a function of a wealth-generating and law-abiding society that can afford, among other things, the expense of proper building codes.”

Indeed, the unfolding catastrophe in Haiti exceeds that of Hurricane Katrina by at least one level of magnitude — because that latter tragedy befell a relatively poor city in what nevertheless is a rich country. Therefore, New Orleans could afford “the expense of proper building codes.”

There are two ways of looking at “the expense of proper building codes.” The editorial board prefers to look at them as a function of “a wealth-generating and law-abiding society” that permits entrepreneurship, so that we can become rich and afford building codes. Thank God for the entrepreneurs!  Without them we might be inhabiting something like the shantyowns of Port-au-Prince.

The second way of looking at the matter would be to remind ourselves that building codes are a restriction. They are a limitation. They are a violation of the strict rules of laissez-faire. If we did not have them, wouldn’t there be ideologues at hand to tell us that we absolutely must not enact them, lest we ruin everything? Might not the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Manhattan Institute be pumping out learned papers to that effect? (”Zoning? But in Houston they don’t have zoning, and look how fast they’re growing!” Maybe they have zoning in Houston by now — but, you get the point.)

Entrepreneurship and the development of the corporation were necessary for the sake of economic development. As thinkers like Hayek established so insistently, they had to be given a measure of independence, since economic knowledge necessarily is dispersed. However, we gave them that independence for the sake of the benefits it would yield — not for its own sake. Beyond a certain point, we cannot garner the fruits of economic development without the introduction of restrictions, taxes, and subsidies. Otherwise we might forever remain in something like the condition of an undeveloped frontier — or a shantytown, such as we might find in the absence of building codes….

Peter Wehner at National Review Online’s “The Corner” offers what surely must be the last word on Pat Robertson’s remarks with regard to Haiti.

The news coming out of Haiti certainly merits a mention. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that Haiti is a place that was not in very good shape to start with, earthquake or no earthquake. It absolutely is one of the very poorest countries in the world, along with Bangladesh and some of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

I imagine that injured people are wandering the streets at this moment. This Associated Press story indicates that at least the main airport in Port-au-Prince is intact enough to allow relief flights to arrive.

Joel Dreyfuss, a native of Haiti, offered some comments overnight at The Root. “There will be a major rescue operation; experts will argue and debate how to remake Haiti again. Consultants will collect large fees. Bill Clinton, who has been serving as the pied piper for Haitian development, will bring investors on another trip to look for opportunity – construction companies will surely join the delegation this time. My hope is that all the experts will listen carefully to the Haitian people and help them rebuild what they need to change Haiti’s future.”

The New York Times offers continuous updates here, emergency information here, and links to organizations soliciting contributions for disaster relief here. The BBC offers continuous updates here, and donation information here.

Extensive coverage is available from the Miami Herald here.

Religious organizations will be in the forefront of relief operations. Click here for Catholic Relief Services. The United Methodist Committee on Relief solicits donations for Haiti here.  World Vision does the same here.