This was a great take-down.
Reason magazine sits in a good position right now, politically and intellectually, to strip away the nonsense of the administration's claim but supporting and accentuating their astonishing truth at the core (almost as if that were the media's Fourth Estate role?!). No matter the photo-ops and untrue talking points, USAID remains total crap, and the world is better off the less of it we have.
Maybe I'm "biased" or "an idiot" etc, but which sane person thinks development aid ought to finance a proxy war half-way across the world? And that when calmer minds propose taking a chainsaw to said racket, hysteria sets in, the intelligentsia howling in pain—hashtag Martin Wolf at the FT yesterday..."The Case For Persisting with Foreign Aid," jezus was that a clowny article.
How Dare You?!
"A program," Petti tells us, "can be relatively small and still be wasteful—and the damage they do can often exceed the price tag. There's a long history of USAID projects supporting bad actors, fostering anti-American resentment, building an unhealthy dependence on foreign money, and doing more harm than good."
Matthew Petty takes us through 5 crazy USAID projects.
- Afghanistan: Opium
Because opium was such a large part of the poor and war-torn country's economy, the fighting between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan republic often looked more like a turf war between rival narco gangs, with the U.S. military protecting some opium fields and bombing others.
20 years, tons of dead Americans (and more Afghani people), a trillion dollars... only to replace the talibans with the talibans. Great statesmanship, great fiscal stewardness.
Turns out Afghani farmers took over a billion of USAID money to irrigate their fields... and grow more opium. Like, coooome one!
- CAR and Kenya: Child sex abuses
Finance orphanages, cover up sex abuse. Standard.
- Medical supply chains to nowhere
Almost $10bn dollars to create amazing health supply chains that would pay for themselves
The multibillion dollar investment, the largest in USAID history, was supposed to improve target countries' ability to obtain medical supplies so much that USAID would never have to fund something like it again. Spoiler alert: That didn't happen.
Dozens of people indicted on fraud charges. Nice.
- Laos: Opium and proxy wars again
as if it wasn't obvious that corrupting "aid" is tied to military adventures...
In Laos, one of Vietnam's neighbors, USAID helped the CIA arm and feed ethnic Hmong guerrillas fighting communist forces—and, sometimes, to compel the Hmong to do that fighting. "Since USAID decided where the rice was dropped, the Hmong had no choice but to stand and fight," writes historian Alfred McCoy. His 1972 book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, also made waves when it claimed USAID was helping Hmong militiamen and other warlords smuggle opium.
- Banned from Cuba
I'm sure it's just because the Cubans are evil and hate progress, while USAID justwannahelp.
Although USAID insists that it is no longer a spy agency, many in both Washington and foreign capitals still treat it like one. Since the 1990s, Congress has budgeted millions of dollars for USAID to undermine the government of Cuba, and the Cuban government in turn has made it illegal to cooperate with USAID.
As in so many areas, Milei has it right.