One of these things is not like the other one...

Remember that song from Sesame Street, "one of these things is not like the other one..." It pops into my head whenever I think about this situation:

As soon as the ceasefire took hold in Lebanon, Hezbollah was out clearing streets, assessing damage to buildings, and handing out wads of cash to those in need, to help get them back on their feet. (Good for them, I say.) The Western press was full of articles saying that we had better rebuild Lebanon faster than Hezbollah could, so that the Lebanese people will like us better than their friendly neighborhood terrorist organization. The Lebanese government recently announced that families who lost their homes will be given about $33,000 in compensation - I don't know for sure, since I haven't been following it closely, but I'm betting that that's better than the US government is doing for Katrina victims. At the Donors' Conference for Lebanon held in Stockholm on Thursday, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked the international community for about $500 million to start rebuilding Lebanon. Instead, he got promises totaling $940 million - almost double what he asked for. Then there are the peacekeepers - after some initial delays, 12,995 troops have been committed to Lebanon out of a requested 15,000. They're already starting to arrive in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, not so very far away...the World Food Program has announced that it will have to cut food rations for displaced persons from Darfur because the rest of the world won't pony up the money to keep them from starving to death. The inadequately small African Union force is short of funding as well, so it's had to cut back on patrols (cause they can't afford the gas), resulting in such a decrease in security in Darfur that the International Rescue Committee has reported that over the last 5 weeks over 200 women were raped in Kalma camp alone, with another 200 reporting being attacked and assaulted in other ways. The African Union's mandate expires in a month, meaning they're supposed to pack up and go home. Theoretically they're to be replaced by UN peacekeepers, but the recent resolution passed by the Security Council says that the peacekeepers can only be deployed if the government of Sudan accepts them, which so far it is refusing to do. But lots of countries have already said that they won't be able to contribute any troops to the peacekeeping force anyway, so even if Sudan accepted them there would likely not be anywhere near the number needed to actually provide security in Darfur.

So, in one case, we have a very recent emergency which no one predicted (including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who recently said that if he had known how strongly Israel would react, he wouldn't have had the soldiers kidnapped), but in which the international community has really done an amazing job of responding, generously contributing money and people to resolve the crisis as quickly as possible. And in the other case, a situation which has been going on for years - was anyone caught off guard by people in Darfur needing food aid? Or the need for boots on the ground to protect civilians? And yet we can't find the money or troops to keep people from starving and being raped.

Anyone else feeling a little cognitive dissonance here?