A new hope

Published January 12, 2005

The response to the tsunami disaster by Western governments, and far more so than by ordinary people in the West who haven't been motivated by any political calculations, is being described as "unprecedented, "astounding," "deeply-moving." All those descriptions, and others like them, are fully justified. Absent from them, though, is the descriptive term that would matter the most. It would be "permanent."

In...