Does anyone disagree with the following: 1) The purpose of US aid to other countries is not to improve the living conditions of poor people in those countries but to prop up pro-US elites, subsidize US corporations, thwart independent economic development, and pursue other US political objectives. 2) Compared to the status quo, poor people in recipient countries would be better off if all US foreign aid were eliminated. (As I recall this is the position that Frances Moore Lappe took in a Food First publication I read several years ago. I don't know if this represents current thinking at Food First.) The point here is not about cutting off aid to undemocratic regimes. (As Daniel Ellsberg put it very eloquently in "Hearts and Minds" about US policy in Vietnam: "We're not on the wrong side. We ARE the wrong side.") Many liberals honestly think (I mean here folks in the heartland, not policy wonks) that US foreign aid is about helping poor people. The present terms of the debate -- stingy Jesse Helms wants to cut foreign aid, good-hearted liberals want to save it -- fosters the miseducation that foreign aid is about helping poor people. I want to challenge that. During the debate over public funding of CPB someone posted remarks in Congress by Bernie Sanders where he pointed out that CPB has failed its mandate to serve the public by being cravenly pro-corporate in its programming, etc. and threatened to vote against CPB funding in the future. It seems to me that lefties in Congress should be taking advantage of the debate on foreign aid to say something similar here. I don't doubt that there are some people in AID who are trying to do good things. (Of course, there are liberals in the CIA too... the folks I have known who take development seriously wouldn't work for AID because AID's policies are fundamenatally in conflict with grassroots economic development. And then you have AID's connections with the CIA, AIFLD, etc...) And I know from experience that there are good folks in the donor countries who know how to play the game and get some of AID's money -- which while a puny portion of the US budget, is still a substantial pile to the people doing this kind of work -- to use for good things. And the outcome of the current debate will no doubt be to tie expenditures even more tightly to imperialist objectives. If nothing else, US foreign aid will never be completely eliminated because of the Israel lobby, but that's another story... Bob Naiman
