Posted on 02/07/2025 1:35:37 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
It’s impossible to say “all” foreign aid, especially that which passes through the Kennedy-era United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is “wasted.” But it is equally impossible to assess that a majority of foreign aid “works.” Therein lies the rub for the U.S. taxpayer, and the moral imperative for the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (officially the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization) to go about fisking USAID as one of its first orders of business.
Without repeat and loud, evidenced, and exemplified assurances that their lives and the lives of others are being made better, safer, and freer as a result of their coercive investment, there exists no ethical justification for gifting away $50bn or so a year.
Nor was it ever envisioned as such an entity, with its earliest advocates such as President John F. Kennedy–oft falsely invoked by the legacy media–acknowledging that America’s 1960s aid efforts were meant to usher in “a decade of development.”
It has now been 6.4 decades, and reading JFK’s letter to Congress on the subject from March 1961, it is easy to see how he would likely agree with President Trump on streamlining America’s soft power efforts.
Kennedy made the following points from the get-go:
1. Existing foreign aid programs and concepts are largely unsatisfactory and unsuited for our needs and for the needs of the underdeveloped world as it enters the Sixties.
2. The economic collapse of those free but less-developed nations which now stand poised between sustained growth and economic chaos would be disastrous to our national security, harmful to our comparative prosperity and offensive to our conscience.
3. There exists, in the 1960’s, an historic opportunity for a major economic assistance effort by the free industrialized nations to move more than half the people of the less-developed nations into self-sustained economic growth, while the rest...
(Excerpt) Read more at thenationalpulse.com ...
Yeah the same mindset that “fought for hearts and minds” in Vietnam
Cold War is over. The US does not have a national security interest anymore in trying to buy “friends” around the world with “aid” to keep them going Communist.
It time the US Government join the 21st Century.
Didn’t Reagan once say something, along the lines of, that the only earthly eternal life, is a government program? That government programs never expire??
Perhaps there were good reasons for creation of various government programs, at the time they were created. Perhaps. But then, these programs never go away.
And in many cases, such as LBJ and the “War on Poverty”, the programs do not succeed at solving the problems they were set up to deal with. Arugably, we fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.
But in that case, there is a belief among many in government, that we just haven’t spent enough money on anti-poverty programs, and that was the reason for failure.
And somehow, they couldn’t fund $5 billion for the border wall. Guess there is $50 billion to reallocate to the border wall now.
I sincerely believe a lot of the money allocated in those aid “programs” went right back to the DNC and most of the rest was grafted by the countries it went to. Very little was left to do what it was intended for.
It kinda made sense then.
The 50s and 60s saw the independence of many new countries in Africa. Helping them to develop economically and democratically seemed like a good idea in the Cold War era.
Whether it helped or not is debatable.
“”””It kinda made sense then.
The 50s and 60s saw the independence of many new countries in Africa. Helping them to develop economically and democratically seemed like a good idea in the Cold War era.
Whether it helped or not is debatable.””””
People are aware that the communist Chinese are making big plays in controlling Africa right now, but few remember the books and articles about their big African push in the 50s, the first ugly Mau-Mau butchery also happened in the 50s, and vice-president Nixon was nearly killed in Latin America during the 50s.
African countries are getting tired of the Chinese. They are out staying their welcome.
I will disagree. There is still a need to buy friends in many parts of the world, and buying (or renting) their friendship is much cheaper than the alternatives. Big issue with USAID is that there is not much evidence that their activities were buying the US friends anywhere but in the Globohomo halls of sin, and more evidence that they were alienating those we should want on our side.
BTTT
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