I don't usually leave the office to find a place to blog over lunch, but there's something I have to say, because I haven't seen it said and I think it should be in the mix of current discussion:
We should commit not only to our excellent rescue and recovery efforts in Haiti, but to help to rebuild it, and particularly to rebuild Port-au-Prince.
We should do so not only because it is the right thing to do, because it is generous, because we are competing with China for hearts and minds.
We should do so because we have the expertise and we have the slack demand for our construction industry.
Haiti and particularly Port-au-Prince will be rebuilt. They will be build, essentially in one of two ways: shoddy or well.
Without aid -- that is, without materials and expertise -- it will be rebuilt shoddily. That's what Haiti can afford on its own.
It so happens that our country -- and specifically my state of California -- is a world leader in earthquake safety. Building most construction to California safety standards saves lives and saves economies. It is not, however, the cheapest way to go. Rebar doesn't grow on trees.
It so happens that we also have a largely moribund construction industry in this country, thanks to the real-estate busts (domestic and commercial.)
We have architects, engineers, construction leaders, and machine operators hungry for work.
Haiti could use them. We don't need to send people to carry bags of sand and work manually with shovels -- Haitians themselves can be hired (or even volunteer) to provide that unskilled labor. But unemployed skilled American workers, like machine operators and tradesmen, could be doing great and good work in Haiti in the period to come. Maybe substituting in and out, for a month or two, as it makes sense.
No one should get rich on this. Companies should be doing it for little if any profit, given that their alternative is to remain moribund. But the government should hire them to give some of the best foreign aid that we'll ever have provided: building a stronger and more secure Haiti, the second country in our hemisphere to declare its independence, and one that has often suffered and sometimes done well under American hegemony.
We can allow Haiti to become an entirely failed state. If Rush Limbaugh had his way, it would become a major recruiting ground for people who wanted to settle grudges with the U.S. But we can instead help build a better and safer country than that -- and put some money into the pockets of American small businesses and workers at the same time. Perhaps some of the car companies we partly own would be kind enough to build us some trucks.
This seems like a gesture that would help everyone, and the sort of thing that might pay off dividends for decades down the line, the way that the Marshall Plan did and that the Iraq War did not. It would help Haiti, help Haitians not yet born, and help our own economy.
Let's put this idea in the mix. I'm happy if anyone else can improve on it.