Cruel season, weather wise, and as sometimes happens, we are tempted to consider our comparative luck in relation to other countries. While surely American concerns should focus first on what we can and must do at home in response to disasters from Nevada to Florida, we cannot help but notice how blighted and even helpless the downtrodden are in unfree countries.
For it is not really luck that gets us through the catastrophes by which the earth warns us to beware of the commandment to be good shepherds to its resources (a clear lesson of the Deluge, repeatedly forgot by climate crisis deniers no less than climate crisis fanatics), it is our uniquely successful form of government.
READ MORE from Roger Kaplan: Flyover Countries: A Report From French Africa
Despite the dysfunctions brought about by entrenched administrative statists, we, as a free people, react quickly and efficiently to threats and disasters. It is highly unlikely we could be hit as hard by such recent blows of nature as hit Libya and Morocco this month.
Thousands killed by water and stone, what more do you need? And they don’t have the resources or the skilled manpower to rescue the dying. They didn’t at Lisbon in1755, either, and the toll eventually got close to a hundred thousand. It provoked a debate between Voltaire and Rousseau that shaped the modern world’s competing mind sets.
Voltaire’s anti-clerical side led him to see in the disaster (which occurred on All Souls Day when most Lisboetas were at church) evidence that evil is real and there is not much to say after that about God’s and Providence’s ultimate goodness as a comforting way out. Rousseau, a bit of a pantheist as well as an irresponsible father, argued that his great rival was wrong to take the case to a theological (or anti-deist) level, because what was at issue was that the Portuguese had done a bad job of urban planning, a point the Californians have also taken to heart.
The fact is that neither man got it. No one can. That said, in the short view it is correct that if you build dykes and homes badly, you take risks that might be avoided by — by what? A more just and equitable society? Or by a free society where the incentive is to buy and sell a house that will stand?
Big questions.
Libya has been a mess — and a divided land — since the ill-conceived and worse-executed Anglo-French-U.S. (Obama-Biden-Clinton, plus that rare case of an English import we could have done without, Samantha Power) expedition against the pirate of Tripoli, Muammar Gaddafi. The oddball tyrant was a neighborhood nuisance, but the vacuum his downfall left is in large part to blame for the sequel, heightened insecurity in the entire northern tier of the continent, and particularly in the Sahel region to Libya’s south.
A country with in effect two governments, neither of which is able to oversee institutions and the delivery of efficient public services, is in no position to deal with a killer typhoon as mighty as the one that swept across the Mediterranean and, busting inadequate dams, devastated the region around Derna, a major city on the eastern coast and one-time den of Barbary pirates.
The region is controlled by Khalifa Haftar, head of the Libyan National Army and a U.S.-Libya dual. Dual is the word, as since the downfall of Gaddafi, in whose regime he served off and on, he has the support of Egypt and the UAE, who appreciate his defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood factions (including some pledged to ISIS) in the east and do not appreciate the rival government in Tripoli’s inclusion of such elements.
The U.S., despite the presence of policy heavyweights in its foreign policy establishment, is playing the kumbaya game, possibly because the United Nations recognizes the Tripoli gang while the Arabs, with unholy allies in France and Russia, are pumping the easterners.
Plus, Israel made a gesture toward the easterners in August, resulting in screeches of indignation blaming the Netanyahu government for siding with a military strong man; but going by surely incomplete reports, Haftar was simply noticing that it might be sensible to get on board the Abraham Accords movement.
But it is also that everyone in Africa knows Israel, when it offers help, it delivers.
It is not simply that North Africans, whether Arabs or Berbers or Tuareg or what-all, really do not see the point, when they look into their hearts, of dying for Palestine, especially as they never do die for Palestine. Palestinians — and, for that matter, Israelis — die for Palestine, while Palestine’s “leaders” and their faraway supporters use the misery of the blocked situation to give themselves marks in virtue. They do not see the point, but they rarely say so out loud as it can get them killed. Haftar knows he is a marked man anyway, since both Egypt and UAE have been trying to turn the page on the Israel-Palestine question and get on with real life (which everyone knows but no one admits would be the real way to help the downtrodden Palestinians). (RELATED: Biden Edges Away From Israel)
But it is also that everyone in Africa knows Israel, when it offers help, it delivers. Living in existential danger due to being surrounded by fascist gangsters, Israel is about as good at surviving, and helping others survive, as any nation on earth. Quietly and efficiently, and without taking public credit, Israel is, throughout Africa, doing the Lord’s work and it would be well for Ms. Samantha Power, head of USAID, after admitting to giving her boss lousy foreign policy advice, considered this in reviewing some of our international aid-and-rescue operations.
It is thus also disappointing to see the Moroccans, who suffered a catastrophic earthquake in the Atlas mountain range about the time Hurricane Daniel was bearing down on Derna, being pig-headed, no haram blasphemy intended, about who should help them, since they are demonstrably in need of help. But there you have it. They may have been among the first to get on board with the Abraham movement — frankly there was no reason for the Trump administration to give them the Western Sahara as a reward, but that is another issue — they still cannot bring themselves to call for the Mogen David or IDF teams to come in and save lives.
It is not strictly anti-Semitism or fake pan-Arabism; after all, the Moroccans are also inclined to refuse help from Arab states other than Qatar (someone should follow the money, but that is just a suggestion) and Spain, of all Europeans. (Spain supported the annexation of Western (ex-Spanish) Sahara after decades of supporting the indigenous Sahrawis.) But Morocco, like Algeria and Tunisia, is an ancient Jewish land and their regimes, however unique, are not free and thus need all the legitimacy cards they can find, including delusional anti-Zionism when it suits them.
There is nothing in this for the U.S., really, other than to discreetly let the interested parties know they ought to be ashamed of themselves. But that might be too much to ask of a Washington establishment not sure of its pride in its own country, forgive the oblique mention to the unusual flags on our embassies, a cause of some concern around the regions we are discussing. (READ MORE: Five Quick Things: What About That Flag At The Embassy?)
Anyway American disaster relief usually is spearheaded by the private sector — another overlooked advantage of societies designed to foster free men, free markets, and grace. It’s Rosh haShona coming up, let’s not forget the deepest gift of Abraham, which was to show us where to seek guidance.
