Two Disasters: One By Man The Other By God

No one thought it would happen this fast. Disasters are like that. Maybe that’s one of the things that makes them a disaster: the speed at which things do South.

When America started our War on Terror, George W Bush, who was president at the time, said it might take us 20 years to win. He was right and wrong. Here it is 20 years later, almost to the day of the attacks on New York, the Pentagon and America. And the war is over. So, he was right. But, we didn’t win. We lost. So, he was wrong.

This is not a political post; it’s an anti-political posts. As Mercutio curses on his death bed,

A plague o’ both your houses!

It’s often quoted as “pox” instead of plague. Mercutio was cursing the Montagues and the Capulets in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” Act III, Sc 1. But, he might as well have been talking to the Democrats and the Republicans.

• George W Bush got us into the war!
• A majority of senate Democrats supported the war!
• Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance!
• Dick Cheney wanted the war for his Halliburton buddies!
• Obama had eight years to end the war and didn’t!
• Trump negotiated with the Taliban!
• Biden pulled the troops out that led to the collapse!

There’s plenty of blame to go around. Shakespeare could have written this script, or maybe Cicero.

The fact is that we are leaving. And while everyone expected the Taliban to make gains, no one thought that they’d take the capital in 36 hours. Twenty years, a trillion dollars, scores of dead soldiers and thousands of dead Afghanis. And we are literally shooting civilians on the runway to make room for our planes to escape.

We were so busy trying to avoid “another Vietnam” during the fighting that we forgot the ending. No, we don’t have pictures of helicopters rising off a rooftop with desperate civilians clinging to it. Instead we have pictures of C-17 cargo ships taking off with civilians clinging on the outside until they finally dropped to their death.

Pray for the people of Afghanistan. Pray for those how helped us. Pray for the women who face untold horrors. Pray for the children. Pray for all of us.

I didn’t expect to write about Afghanistan today. I try to avoid polarizing topics and nothing is more polarizing than politics. Instead I thought I would be writing about another disaster. Saturday the country of Haiti was hit by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake. We don’t know the death toll yet. We may not ever know. But, it’s going to be higher than the 1000 that have been confirmed so far.

Haiti still hasn’t recovered from the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck the capital of Port au-Prince eleven years ago. The death toll this time will less than the 250,000 that died in 2010.

Haiti is personal to me. It has been for a long time. And it’s only become more personal over time.

It’s not just that I’ve been to Haiti. Many people have visited Haiti. There’s a beautiful beach that the cruise lines established called Labadee Shores. It’s gorgeous. It’s also not like the rest of Haiti. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. Labadee Shores was my first visit to Haiti, but my last was to Port au-Prince. My lovely wife and I were adopting four children.

Adoption, especially an open adoption where the adopted and birth parents meet, is a strange operation. They are my kids, in every sense except blood. And they are also the children of their birth parents.

We adopted our kids before the earthquake. After the earthquake, we were able to confirm that their mother survived. Haiti has stayed in our thoughts and prayers ever since.

My children, all grown now, are not the only connection to that beautiful island nation. One of my daughters, born in Colombia, married a man from Haiti. He’s a good man. He’s a hard worker. He just finished basic training in the United States Army Construction Engineering Corps.

After the earthquake this weekend, he was able to confirm that his family is safe.

The year we adopted our kids there was a coup that deposed the president, a hurricane and several other disasters. Haiti is like that. There’s always another issue. This year, the president was assassinated, the earthquake struck, and tropical storm Grace is bearing down on Haiti this week.

Pray for the people of Haiti. Pray for the ones suffering from the earthquake. Pray for the families. And especially pray for the children.

I know I am.

Stay safe

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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