Posted on 02/15/2006 1:14:19 PM PST by hedgetrimmer
Parade magazine recently ranked the twenty worst dictators currently in power. Many names are familiar—Fidel Castro, Muammar Qaddafi, Kim Jong-Il, Robert Mugabe and others. They are all guilty of human rights violations and in some cases have committed outright genocide. But there’s another trait common to all twenty leaders—every single one has received foreign aid from wealthy Western countries.
Popular Washington, D.C., rhetoric says that development aid should be dispensed to corruption-free countries with laws and policies conducive to supporting sustained economic growth. President Bush created Millennium Challenge Accounts to funnel aid to such countries. However, few countries have qualified for the program and little money has actually been disbursed. Instead, we find that both the U.S. and its partner countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have contributed a great deal of aid to these oppressive regimes.
Parade ranked the Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir as the world’s worst dictator. During his reign OECD countries gave his regime more than $6 billion in non-military aid. The U.S. accounted for more than $1 billion of that aid. Kim Jong-Il was ranked as the second worst dictator and received a little over $1 billion in aid, with more than half of it coming from the U.S. Than Shwe of Myanmar, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan round out the top five dictators on the list. The U.S. contributed $32 million to Myanmar, $1.1 billion to Zimbabwe, and $385 million to Uzbekistan.
Overall, OECD countries contributed aid to every one of Parade’s 20 worst dictators. Combined, these leaders received nearly $55 billion in aid. The U.S. contributed to 19 of the 20 worst dictators; King Abdulla of Saudi Arabia was somehow left off of the U.S. gravy train. In total, the U.S. contributed more than $7 billion in aid to these leaders. In North Korea, Belarus, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan the U.S. contributed more than 20 percent of the total aid these countries received from OECD countries.
Government-sponsored aid has failed to promote economic growth in the third world. From 1970 to 2000, more than $400 billion poured into poor African countries with no development to show for it. Parade’s list of dictators makes our foreign aid record even more disturbing. Not only has it failed to promote development, in many cases our aid has supported oppressive dictatorships.
Following Hamas’s recent victory in Palestine’s elections, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened to cut off aid to Palestine, saying, “The United States is not prepared to fund an organization that advocates the destruction of Israel, that advocates violence and that refuses its obligations.” Perhaps the U.S. should apply that policy to the dictators on Parade’s list as well. By providing aid to these dictators the U.S. has given them a source of funds to use to secure political support and likely prolonged their oppressive reigns.
The first rule of development policy should be to do no harm. Unfortunately OECD and U.S. aid have failed to promote development and actively promoted harm by aiding oppressive dictatorships. This kind of aid also unfortunately tends to undermine economic freedom by politicizing economic life in the recipient country and by preserving inefficient regimes. Over the last 30 years development aid has lowered measures of economic freedom in both dictatorships and democracies. To better promote freedom, and consequently development, we should end economic development aid to dictators and democracies alike.
Ping.
All foreign aid, to every country, should end.
It doesn't serve those who it is supposed to serve, and it doesn't serve our taxpayers.
Foreign Aid, even if it isn't stolen, only encourages an inefficient system.
Leftists praise many of world's worst dictators,.
Food out of my children's mouths to fund these criminals.
It's yet another level of welfare. Individual, corporate, and foreign national.
"However, few countries have qualified for the program and little money has actually been disbursed."
So give me back my money. But wait....
"Instead, we find that both the U.S. and its partner countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have contributed a great deal of aid to these oppressive regimes."
Because the US is a wimp driven by commie leftists chest-beating about how we must give (money) to poor countries because we have "too much". Almost invariably poor because their "systems" don't allow, either by rule and/or by nature, any but the all-powerful (e.g., dictators) to be rich. And the all-powerful steal the money given to "their country" for their own use.
And they all have the same effect...they create laziness and dependency.
While we consider cutting funds to Hamas, we should also reconsider all other foreign funding, hopefully with your outcome as the final outcome. Image how much we could be spending on our own needs while also cutting taxes.
Good, so can I tell my daughter she's not getting that toy for Christmas because the President wants to help someone murder innocent people?
our gubmint seems to love shooting ourselves in the foot...
and the head,torso and abdomen as well.
I don't approve of domestic aid, foreign aid should be out of the question.
ping for later
And then the US has no say how it is spent. Or where. The aid always must be funneled through the worst criminal elements in each country!
What's up with that? Humanitarian aid should be, well, humanitarian. It should be administered directly to those who need it or forget it!
I guess, in a way, I agree with the premise of this article.
We have created an environment in this country which allows Third World Governments to send their "undesirables" north.
Once we change that environment, those Governments will be more attentive to their own people.
This article has been forwarded via e-mail to most on my e-mail list and both of my senators.
Good for you! Thanks!
Castro Drops to 15th on ‘Worst Dictators’ List
January 27, 2006
Cuba’s geriatric tyrant Fidel Castro was dismayed to discover he had fallen out of the top 10 in Parade Magazine’s annual survey of the world’s worst dictators.
“Fidel has dedicated his life to oppressing the Cuban people,” said Mal Huevo, Castro’s press secretary. “He deserves more respect.”
Experts doubt Castro will be able to ascend into the top tier of tyrants. “The bar has been raised,” says Ben Guttmann of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. “Simply impoverishing your people and jailing dissidents is not enough to achieve a high ranking. You need massacres and threats of Armageddon to compete with some of the lunatics running a lot of these countries.”
Castro is still smarting from the failure of his “Martyrs for Marx” initiative last year. Instead of blowing themselves up at the strategically selected targets, all of the volunteers simply escaped to asylum in the United States. Castro is said to be thinking of converting to Islam. “Those Muslims really know how to commit an atrocity,” said Huevo. “Fidel admires their courage. But converting may not work out. He also loves pork.”
read more at...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens31.htm
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