{"id":10743,"date":"2011-08-03T10:47:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T18:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=10743"},"modified":"2011-08-03T10:51:18","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T18:51:18","slug":"the-misleading-reporting-on-foreign-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/03\/the-misleading-reporting-on-foreign-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"The Misleading Reporting on Foreign Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re up for reading a dutifully deceptive article on foreign aid, check\u00a0what the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0has to say about it<\/a>.\u00a0Recognition for the biggest lie in the article goes to this lovely little number:<\/p>\n

At least since the end of World War II, foreign aid\u2019s explicit rationale has been to spread democratic ideals and otherwise protect the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Compare that to what I’ve reported\u00a0here<\/a>, which I’ll excerpt for precision (also listen\u00a0here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

-In a\u00a0June 2010 report for the Congressional Research Service<\/a>, Jeremy Sharp writes that, in addition counterterrorism, aid to Middle East regimes is an attempt to \u201cencourage peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors,\u201d and serves for \u201cthe protection of vital petroleum supplies.\u201d This latter justification was, of course, understood by early post-war national security planners. As a\u00a0Top Secret National Security Council briefing<\/a>\u00a0put it in 1954, \u201cthe Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,\u201d as it \u201ccontains the greatest petroleum resources in the world\u201d as well as \u201cessential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n

-Continued and in some cases increased foreign assistance after the September 11th<\/sup>\u00a0attacks had the benefit of giving \u201cthe United States leverage on key foreign policy issues, since it can make assistance contingent on cooperation,\u201d says the RAND report. But these assistance programs \u201ccan have a negative effect on democratic development by strengthening a state\u2019s capacity for repression\u201d and, as one study concluded \u201cthe more foreign police aid given [to repressive states], the more brutal and less democratic the police institutions and their governments become.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0article 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<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re up for reading a dutifully deceptive article on foreign aid, check\u00a0what the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0has to say about it.\u00a0Recognition for the biggest lie in the article goes to this lovely little number: At least since the end of World War II, foreign aid\u2019s explicit rationale has been to spread democratic ideals and otherwise protect the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-10743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10743"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10749,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10743\/revisions\/10749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10743"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}