Starving Millions for ‘Leverage’ Is Evil

The fact that there is even an argument over what should be done is a disgrace.

Posted on

Sarah Chayes has written what may be one of the most dastardly op-eds I have ever read. She warns against providing aid to Afghanistan too quickly because that would reduce Western “leverage” over the Taliban:

Western countries should not move too fast. Just because we’ve failed to use our leverage in the past doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start now.

One way of thinking about the fraught matter of placing conditions on humanitarian assistance is to consider any offer to provide it as the equivalent of a treaty with a hostile foreign power. The nuclear deals with the USSR and Iran included not only conditions, but intrusive verification procedures. That’s the model that should be applied here.

Putting conditions on humanitarian assistance is always the wrong thing to do. In the case of Afghanistan, holding back resources that millions of Afghans need to survive the winter is monstrous and indefensible. It is not the fault of tens of millions of innocent Afghans that the Taliban won, and they should not be punished for the fact that the U.S. and its client did not prevail. Afghanistan faces a man-made famine if Afghanistan’s reserves are not unfrozen and aid does not resume, and this op-ed is the sort of twisted argument that lays the groundwork for causing such a famine.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

5 thoughts on “Starving Millions for ‘Leverage’ Is Evil”

  1. Doesn’t get any sicker than that. Is there a number that might make this evil #*@# flinch? A couple of million?

  2. The USA as the newest and biggest Banana REPUBLIC, has run out of money and cannot even feed and house her own Citizens.!!

  3. Right on target and time to tar and feather the Bankster’s and the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon!

    Jan 17, 2017 Genocide In Yemen: Media Complicit In US-Saudi War Crimes

    The people of Yemen have found themselves struggling not only for survival, but for a space in the mainstream media’s war coverage. In the shadow of the conflict in Syria, the men, women and children of Yemen are being starved by a war initiated by Saudi Arabia and aided by the Unites States.

    https://youtu.be/0rgXq94VJTI

    1. The “Too Big To Fail” bankers and the MSM belong in the ICC along with the current and former warmongering politicians such as George Warmonger Bush, Tony Blair Witch Project etc.

  4. In the long run it works to Russia’s and China’s behalf. Showing basic compassion wins hearts and it is not so hard to do.

Comments are closed.