I'd send money to MSF/Doctors Without Borders. They seem to be the best qualified.

The Haitian government, a corrupt, violent, kleptocratic, oligarchic tyranny, no matter who has been in power, has had just about as much American help and money to solidify their power to secure several tinpot African countries. The government of this place is like a giant central vacuum that sucks the wealth of the common citizens up into a central tank to be redistributed among the elite families who have ruled it for centuries. This is why in the 2000s, despite hundreds of millions in remittances, they are eating mud. This is why in 2010 an earthquake that would make Hong Kong, a place with many times the population density, yawn in boredom, may have killed more thousands of people than I can even guess at this juncture.

Haiti needs ground-up help, not yet another bailout for its indirectly genocidal government. That said, if the US military wanted to restrict itself to delivering rice to disaster areas, this site probably wouldn't exist.

With all due respect to the people of Haiti, and the many Haitian people I have known and lived among throughout my life, their country has zero national interest for the United States. I do have a personal humanitarian interest, I will be donating a bit of my own money to reconstruction efforts, but I fail to see what any of this has to do with the US military or the US government.

No, I am not taking it too far. The US military has no business steeping foot for one second, in any capacity, in another country. Let there be a flood of volunteers and donations and most of all, help for fundamental societal reform of this dysfunctional country. Realize US intervention in Haiti is part of the reason it is so hideously poor and desperate.

Kelley, the president said Our Cause Is Just. Okay? Gawd he's only been in office for a year!

I just wish some of you guys would just stop and think about what we're doing here sometimes before tossing accusations. No, we're not always perfect. We also don't all hold the same views on every subject, so just because Justin's column takes a given position doesn't mean the rest of us do and that his view will reflect what kind of news we feature. Obviously we are all close enough in our positions that we can work together to put a page together every day, and yes there are guidelines we have to follow no matter what some of us, er, non-boss employees think, but I assure you -- and you can choose to believe me or not -- pro-Israel millionaires do not fund us.

But you can certainly ask Arianna Huffington what she does with the $25 mil she gets from those investors in Israeli defense contractors -- I mean, she doesn't even pay her writers. If we had some gazillionaires giving us even a literal fraction of that you'd never see pledge week again.

I don't believe in being "balanced" -- something is true or it's not (whether I know the truth for certain is another matter). I was just using a random "leader" adjective to describe Abbas, given that his status as president of...whatever, isn't exactly clear. What I do know is that he conducted a coup against the freely elected Hamas government, and that would get him "strongman" credentials in my book. You may disagree.

As for your accusations of millionaire Zionist funding -- if that were true, would we be doing these annoying fund drives all the damn time just to be able to make payroll? And would we criticize Israel so heavily? People like you think Jewish Money is everywhere -- really, if The Jews were that wealthy, they wouldn't need billions in aid. Presumably they have so much money they're even willing to fund people who more or less constantly attack them as long as they call the PA leader a strongman here and there.

Get a grip.

Oh, well in this case it means enlightened liberal democrat, of course. Sorry for the confusion.

(I'm aware, and wondered how long it would take for some stickler to point this out, thanks.)

I see. We disagree on the inherent value of the military so I'm as crazy as a person can be.