Inefficiency is not the same as malice

You are the director of an aid organization who has lost its building, many members of its staff (killed or wounded), and all its records. There are no phones working. The cell towers are down. There is no water and no electricity. Desperate people, many with guns, are roaming the town. Some of the people with guns are not desperate, but greedy, and will shoot you to get a bag of flour to sell on the black market. The police are in just as bad a shape as you are, with many dead, no supplies, and their infrastructure destroyed.

So after many hours of struggle, you manage to get to what is left of the Port-au-Prince airport. There you find that the American affiliate of your organization has sent a pallet of desperately needed food and medical supplies. But you have no trucks. No gas if you could find a truck. No way to protect your supplies from looters if you take them away from the protected enclave at the airport. No idea of how to best distribute what you have, or how to find someone who can make appropriate use of the medications. For all you know, the doctors you used to work with are dead, or seriously injured, or fled. You have managed to borrow a satellite phone from the US Army, and asked for supplies you think you need, but your parent organization says that it will have to put your order in line behind all the other orders from groups to the very overwhelmed suppliers, and the backup at the airport is so bad that, when the plane with the supplies is ready (if they can get a plane), it will have to get to the end of queue that is already four days long and growing.

So:

No, the supplies are not getting out to the people as fast as they are coming in to the airport.

No, not all areas are being served, and many of the most damaged areas are being served the least.

Yes, there is a lot of wasted time and effort.

Yes, there is a lot of duplication.

Yes, a lot of the people on the ground don't know quite what they are doing.

All of that is regrettable, and has bad effects. But the people caught up in this mess are not bad people. They are ordinary people caught up in a terrible, tragic, and very disorganized situation.

Please, until you have evidence to the contrary, assume that they are trying their best, even when that best is, by ordinary standards, not very good. In that situation, not very good may be all that can be done, and it is far better than sitting back and saying, "Well, since they can't do it exactly right, I won't help at all."

(This is inspired by the situation in Haiti and some of the very cynical responses to aid efforts I have read.)