Roger Simon, that eeeevil rayciss, thinks we should Let Central America Sink.
For as long as any of us can remember, those Central American nations have been failed states teetering on the brink of civil war (or over it) or awash in corruption and gangsterism, their peoples impoverished.
Foreign aid, of which they have had plenty, hasn’t helped. After all this time, it is likely that in these instances the reverse has been true. Foreign aid has hurt the development of these countries, creating a dependency that impeded progress. It also — inadvertently, one hopes and assumes — encouraged conditions that allowed the corruption and drug dealing to flourish.
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The best hope for Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and even Mexico is that they learn to fend for themselves. In most of the cases, it could take a long time with considerable pain, but it is the only path that will succeed. Further aid, with exceptions for emergencies, physical and medical, will only make matters worse.Most of all, it will continue to support and deepen a dependency culture that is terrible psychologically for the recipients The aid is not loving. It’s self-interested on the part of the donors in a variety of ways for a variety of goals, few of them beneficial.
Now… where have I heard a similar sentiment before?
Oh, and by the way, Roger old buddy: ixnay on the mergency-ay. All the (good) drugs sent to Africa haven’t done diddly in terms of fixing anything; I very much doubt that Central America would have a different outcome.
I was just thinking of Let Africa Sink.
Why? I was listening to John Batchelor’s podcast on which he interviewed Peter Van Buren, the author of We Meant Well, a book about his experience on a “Provincial Reconstruction Team” embedded with the U.S. Army. The book came out in 2011, but he tells Batchelor that nothing has changed since then. Yes, including since January 2017. What a surprise.
https://www.amazon.com/We-Meant-Well-American-Project/dp/0805094369/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1540294173&sr=8-1
Same goes for people. Let them sink or swim.
I’m all in favour of temporary charity for temporary problems.
I’m opposed to permanent charity for permanent problems without strings
I keep getting banned from places like the Guardian for advocating that anyone on the state teat for more than a year must be sterilized. And also that all drugs ought be legal with the hard ones be provided for free to incorrigible addicts so they can kill themselves quickly.
Perhaps those that grew larger married. At times, only saying at times, married women can become like trees, adding another ring around the trunk every year.
While reading this piece, I squared my thinking cap and came to a never thought of conclusion; US humanitarian aid to foreign nations is much like the US internal welfare system.
Granted, monies allocated are different but they share a similar model. They also share a similar result; a near bottomless pit which will never receive sufficient funding. Somewhat analogous to never enough money for roads or schools. Needless to say, self-enrichment of donors and donees is a cost of doing business.
And it’s also a business at times akin to extortion as in; “nice city/country you got here, it’d be shame to see it go X, Y or Z”.
Then on the next page, there’s US military aid to a mixed bag of nations….
There is (or WAS, anyway) another solution; good old fashioned Paternalistic Colonialism. We could conquer Mexico and send the imbeciles currently misgoverning New Jersey to run the place, thereby improving the governance of both places.
Sadly, we don’t really have the temperament. Sadly, neither does anyone else. But it doesn’t really take too many decades of post colonial kleptocracy, ethnic cleansing, and famine as a tool of statecraft to make all the old Colonial administrations (with the possible exception of the Dutch and the Belgians) look pretty good by comparison.