If you’re up for reading a dutifully deceptive article on foreign aid, check what the Washington Post has to say about it. Recognition for the biggest lie in the article goes to this lovely little number:
At least since the end of World War II, foreign aid’s explicit rationale has been to spread democratic ideals and otherwise protect the United States.
Compare that to what I’ve reported here, which I’ll excerpt for precision (also listen here):
-In a June 2010 report for the Congressional Research Service, Jeremy Sharp writes that, in addition counterterrorism, aid to Middle East regimes is an attempt to “encourage peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors,” and serves for “the protection of vital petroleum supplies.” This latter justification was, of course, understood by early post-war national security planners. As a Top Secret National Security Council briefing put it in 1954, “the Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,” as it “contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world” as well as “essential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.”
-Continued and in some cases increased foreign assistance after the September 11th attacks had the benefit of giving “the United States leverage on key foreign policy issues, since it can make assistance contingent on cooperation,” says the RAND report. But these assistance programs “can have a negative effect on democratic development by strengthening a state’s capacity for repression” and, as one study concluded “the more foreign police aid given [to repressive states], the more brutal and less democratic the police institutions and their governments become.”
Nay, by and large post-WWII foreign aid has had the aim of keeping corrupt yet controllable despots in power, so that we can be the primary influence of policy in the region without nettlesome objections from the population. As far as “protecting” the United States, well that’s true. Except “protect” here has a technical meaning: it means “benefitting the entrenched interests while endangering ordinary Americans.”
The Post article also laments recent cuts to foreign aid. Admittedly, the cuts are primarily in the realm of needy countries, but the article of course fails to mention the realm of security interests, which has not been touched (for example).
Bravo! It's good to see AWC nail this fraud.