The crucially important voters of Iowa got one message loud and clear from the rise of Al Qaeda from bases in Sudan and later Afghanistan: poverty-stricken people in foreign countries can cause big problems for the U.S.
As recent Kennedy School honors graduate Eric Savage reminded me today, a 2003 survey by Lake Snell Perry Associates showed that 81% of Iowa voters believed the government should increase its support for poor and developing countries, 73% supported creation of a fund to challenge other nations to join the US in assisting countries that eliminate corruption, enhance education and health care, and create economic opportunity, and 68% urged Congress to fully fund President Bush’s initiative to battle AIDS globally. (Eric is off to India to develop micro-finance lending: great stuff).
Let’s see how the Democratic candidates stack up on this subject.
In sum, I’d say we’ve got a set of candidates that do us proud. Richardson offers the best balance of general assertions and specific suggestions, but dead last on his list. Obama and Edwards have their priorities right but could beef up the details. Clinton is fine as far as she goes, but must want to do more than just improve education.
The regressive Republican position on foreign aid, let us not forget, is that we already give plenty. Carol Adelman, the Chief Orwell Research Scholar Director of the “Center for Global Prosperity” at the Hudson Institute, made this argument eloquently in a 2003 article in Foreign Affairs. Her thesis is that private remittances by U.S. workers should count as foreign aid (“Immigrants in Maryland can use the Internet to send groceries and medicines to needy relatives in El Salvador or Vietnam.”) Hedge fund investments should also be considered: foreign direct investments (click here to read about Blackstone’s $4.1 billion offering), she writes, are part of the reason why we should be considered, “most generous.”
This may be quibbling, but 8 in 10 Iowans don’t believe “fighting poverty and hunger overseas was essential to ensuring global safety and security”. From the executive summary it states that “81 percent believe the U.S. government should do more to help poor and developing countries”. There is a difference therein. I recognize that our country should do more to assist foreign countries (tied to measures of responsibility of course), but I don’t pretend for a second that hunger is the root cause of terrorism. Al Qaeda (our principal enemy, but certainly not our only one), draws a large swath of Muslim society to its side, regardless of income level. For God’s sake, bin Laden is a multi-millionaire, and he may hate us the most. It isn’t poverty and hunger that turns people into suicide bombers.
I revised my post to keep the reporting specifically to the contents of the survey. Moving on to your more general, and also very good in my opinion point, I agree that the 9/11 terrorists were not poor, and in fact specifically challenged Eric with that. On the other hand, is it a coincidence that Al Qaeda got its start in two of the world’s poorest countries — Sudan and Afghanistan. I don’t think so. Do you?
I say territories without functioning government (i.e., failed states). Tomato, to-mah-to.
<
p>
It isn’t the poverty, or else we’d be dealing with hordes of Haitian terrorists. It is the anarchy.
What do you conclude? Aid to Haiti has little to do with our security? It doesn’t matter, as a security issue, if people are starving unless they live in a country without a government?
Well, if you look at the developed world’s past experience with aid to Africa, for example, you would have to conclude that throwing more money at the problem doesn’t help one bit if their government is unstable, ineffectual or just plain corrupt.
to some extent. If a person is hired as a policeman, and the government is not capable of providing police living wages (for that locale), then demanding bribes becomes economically smart for the police. The USA can help reduce this kind of corruption by building the capacity for African governments to function.
<
p>
I’m not saying this will eliminate corruption. Our government functions relatively well on a word scale, and we still have our Vice President assuring his corporation massive no-bid contracts. Not to mention Jack Abramoff (former President of the College Republicans) showing up at White House Hanukkah parties!
I’m not saying that poverty aid is wrong. It isn’t.
<
p>
The utility of such aid is up to somedebate, I suppose, based on the efficacy of the “government” receiving it, but it has nothing to do with preventing things like 9/11.
to the terrorist cause.
<
p>
Terrorists have to justify their murder. The propaganda they use often refers to terrible poverty. Bin Laden points to Gaza with its 75% unemployment rate, and says, “The United States does nothing to help these people. The U.S. cares only about oil, so it’s no problem to kill Americans.” And middle class youths in Muslim see that misery in Gaza, and buy into his logic.
<
p>
It’s not too far-fetched to see that if America took a more prominent role in aiding the health and education of poor people around the world, we would take a propaganda point away from bin Laden & his ilk.
<
p>
But Ted Stevens needs to build a bridge to nowhere. Good thing he was the chair of Senate Appropriations for all those years.
Mexico, Yemen, Ethiopia, Tunisia, essentially all of Africa, El Salvador, Peru, Venezuela, Guayana, all of the Caribean, The Balkans, south west Asia, most of China, 90% of the islands in the Pacific, the Aleuts, most of the formewr Soviet republics, ad nauseum?
<
p>
I guess we are in deep do-do. I suppose we could just hit every American tax payer with a 100% VAT, and double our local, state, and federal taxes and we could give every “poor “person in the world $100.00.
<
p>
What about reparations for slavery and murdering the Native Americans? These folks don’t deserve a few hundred grand apiece? Then there are the Hawaiin’s—they got screwed as well. My, my. We owe a lot of people a lot of money.
It might end by the Liberal Establishment seizing your car and dinnerware forcing you to use the bus and paper plates.
<
p>
You seem surrounded by liberals — crazy, crazy liberals who want you forking over your hard earned money to the Aleuts and making reparations to the Philipines. Hopefully, you can make your escape without losing china.
<
p>
I think you’re right that foreign aid is given in a rancid manner. It’s not exactly an area of government given much popular oversight or subject to much accountability. That does not say there aren’t practical reasons to up it, or that our national sense of being a good people might not impel us to up it, or, to follow on Bob’s point, that Iowans might care about it more than you or I do.
We could come bloody close to handing out some franklins to every poor person in the world if we re-distributed our foreign aid away from the military subsidies sent to Israel and Colombia on a yearly basis. Just sayin…
I’m trying to remember an election that was won or lost over the issue of foreign aid. If anything, voters have traditionally been more passionate about cutting it than increasing it. Rural America occasionally pushes foreign aid as a means of moving agricultural products — not out of an interest in Bangladesh, Haiti, or Rwanda.
<
p>
On a policy and moral level, there certainly are a lot of good questions about foreign aid. Grinding poverty is an dangerous incubator for new pathogens. In a global economy, poverty pulls down wages everywhere. Morally, human beings should not be left to suffer. The terrorism connection, as others have noted, is weak. Political radicalism, of which terrorism is a violent expression, usually results from the gap between expectation and reality. Grinding poverty doesn’t tend to boost the expectation side of that equation. So there are policy and moral questions.
<
p>
I’m scratching my head about the political question. Possibly, as Charley recently responded to me, we blog readers — particularly those of us in Iowa reading Blue Mass Group — should be checking the candidates positions and foreign aid is among them. As vetters of candidate’s progressive-pragmatic bona fides, we should be sniffing into their position papers.
<
p>
Possibly, that’s our blog reader role. I don’t know. Maybe you’re being provocative. However, in the actual world, candidates don’t win on the basis of alignment on the issues. If they did, we would be reading about the accomplishments of the Dukakis Administration. Further, why, in Heaven’s name, have Republicans gotten any traction out of their opposition to the estate tax? If issues and facts mattered so much for winning elections, why did they lose no votes on that?
<
p>
One could imagine a model of how elections work where each candidate offers positions on the important issues of the day. Voters vote based on the priority of these issues and their agreement with the candidate’s position. That’s a nice model. That model supports exactly the kind of pragmatic approach that infuses your posts. Unfortunately, such a model has as much predictive power as a painting of a barometer.
…from something I read a number of years ago in, I believe, the Wall Street Journal. The vast majority of funds spent by the US government on foreign aid is actually spent in the US, paid to American companies and American workers to produce products that are distributed to recipients in other countries. Little monies are actually spent in the recipient countries. Essentially, the American foreign aid program is little more than corporate welfare–which, of course, also benefits the corporations’ employees and suppliers.
<
p>
I could understand why Iowans might be in favor of foreign aid: a significant portion of foreign aid is food aid (another significant portion is military materiel), and Iowa is a significant producer of foodstuffs.
Full disclosure, I work in the “aid” business, but as part of a terrific non-profit based in Boston. I won’t weigh in on the terrorist connection, but just add my two cents that as the wealthiest country in the world, we have an obligation to help others, especially those in countries that we have actively suppressed (such as Haiti) or ignored in times of need (such as Rwanda). Thank you for the Carol Adelman comment – have had the displeasure of working directly with her and she somehow manages to twist every aspect of development to benefit for-profit entities. Check out the 2008 priorities of the ONE Campaign and pay attention to foreign aid levels currently being worked out in the House and Senate. The president’s “doubling” of HIV/AIDS funding for 08-12 is actually less than flat funding based on current spending and he’s gotten nothing but accolades for it.
Raj is absolutely correct. Much of this alleged foreign aid is spent right here in USA. The goods and services are then exported.
<
p>
One area that I am also privy to is these alleged “nonprofits” right here in our greater Boston area. The only people who do not profit are the American taxpayers. On the other hand, the president of this particular nonprofit, so called, as well as the directors, their six VP’s, project directos all the way down to the administrative assistants are very, very well compensated. One could almost say it is unseemly. First class air travel, to the third world cesspool that they are saving—–on my dime. It’s a beautiful thing, and 80% of their funding is from the US Treasury—well that’s what their annual report states. Another 5% comes from the World Bank. Another festering sore on the ass of the planet.
<
p>
We can’t even save ourselves. Who is going to pick up the pieces when USA goes down the crapper?
Full disclosure, I work in the “aid” business, but as part of a terrific non-profit based in Boston.
<
p>
Just to let you know, there is no such thing as a non-profit. There is such a thing as a not for profit.
<
p>
There is a difference.
<
p>
A not for profit does not have shareholders who realize the profits of the corporations (they are usually organized as corporations or corporate-like entities). Where does the “excess” money (that is, the money that is taken in but not dispensed to those they are supposed to serve) go? Why, to the high muckty-mucks running the not for profit entity, of course. That has been observed.
<
p>
A non-profit would have no “excess” money. But, they would also not exist. Not for profit is a scam.
Alright there are a lot of misconceptions that need to be cleared up
<
p>
-Islamism “islamofacism” do not exist as ideologies that unify terrorists, that is about as productive to foreign policy as lumping Soviet and Chinese communism together (we did, the result was Korea and Vietnam and not good in either case)
-two the only thing that causes suicide terrorism is the foreign occupation of a national homeland by a democratic country, you can look at Sri Lanka, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon in the 80s and find the same parallel, religion and hunger have little to do with it
-three foreign aid largely goes into the pockets of dictators, Koffi Annans sons, or to places where it generally does not need to go, now not saying we should cut it because of this, on the contrary we should spend the money better and smarter
-but smarter money and not more money is the solution, reform the regressive policies of the World Bank and the IMF, invest in micro loans and incentives to build organic economies rather than simply stave off starvation etc.
The African continent is just chock full of social injustice by white Europeans set right by the indiginous educational and cultural elite. A scintillating example of one success story after another.
<
p>
It’s broken, very likely beyond repair.
…part of the reason that Africa, mostly sub-Saharan Africa, but also countries like Egypt, are in such disarray–to put it mildly–is because of European meddling. I might excuse the meddling in Egypt (the Roman Empire meddled there, too), but not sub-Saharan Africa.
The Economist magazine recently noted that despite the lack of scientific support for the argument, Congress has pushed the subsidization of corn based ethanol. This despite the fact that sugar based ethanol has been demonstrated to be far more efficient.
<
p>
The reason: Corn has a substantial American constituency, where sugar is grown in tropical regions (Brazil, India, the Caribbean).
http://www.soyatech….
Part of the reason I was disappointed while reading Dodd?s energy plan was his reference to helping American farmers through government sponsored transition to bio-fuels.
<
p>
Rather than look for the candidate who simply grants foreign aide its due attention, I?m looking for someone to promise re-alignment of aide around the Copenhagen Consensus.
http://www.copenhage…