Tsunami relief: who's carrying the ball?

The Galley Slaves blog notes an article that lists the countries that have stepped up and provided massive relief to the SE Asia tsunami victims, led by Japan's 1/2 Bil and the US's $350M. Check out who's not helping their fellow Muslims: Iran (under $650K), Saudi ($10M), Kuwait ($2M), Oman and the UAE gave nothing.

And the French are griping and moaning about the US's primacy in the relief efforts. Here's an observation from Greg Djerejian on articles in Le Monde denigrating the US relief efforts:

Rather than commend the U.S., if just for a moment in the midst of this immense tragedy, Le Monde's journalists and cartoonists prefer to insinuate that the U.S. has nefarious motives in Indonesia, or make crude fun of the difficulties in Iraq having 'prepared' us for Indonesia's blight. Such sad fare isn't just wrong, tasteless, petty and rancidly provincial. It speaks of a society, like contemporary Germany, that's ails and needs scapegoats. It's not politically correct to look internally for them anymore. So everyone loves to beat up that favorite bogeyman--the U.S.--out of a mixture of incomprehension, envy, fascination, stupidity and crude stereotyping. It's sad really.