One Lemon Leads To Another Dept.

     There are many things I could say about foreign aid, but the great majority of them are obscene. If we start from the premise that using the tax funds of the nation – i.e., the money already stolen from working Americans – to benefit the denizens of foreign hellholes lands is somehow legitimate, you can rationalize any number of subsequent offenses against the laws of God and Man. But unless my Gentle Readers would like me to start foaming at the mouth this early in the day, I’d better pass from that subject right now.

     Sarah Anderson comments thus on Marco Rubio’s “reformed” foreign aid plan:

     [W]e're no longer just tossing money out the door; there's an end goal. We're partnering with these countries to help them stabilize and eventually take care of themselves with less and less of our help. As a part of the plan, the countries' governments themselves must also increase their domestic health spending. A State Department fact sheet promises that "U.S. government financial support will be linked to countries’ ability to meet or exceed key health metrics with financial incentives for countries who exceed those metrics."
     It's a model that Rubio has been pushing from day one since he took over the State Department, and it's the most logical one for foreign involvement.

     No, Sarah. I like you and I think you write reasonably well, but the “most logical [model] for foreign involvement” is warfare. That’s what comes of laying big prizes before a gaggle of rapacious Third Worlders: they fight over it until one manages to get away with the lion’s share of the booty.

     But let’s leave that highly predictable outcome to the side for a moment. When the fighting is slight and quickly resolved – usually because the most powerful bureaucrats of the recipient government get their claws into the money immediately – the consequences are almost never the ones hoped for:

1. There’s a charade of “bidding” for contracts nominally aimed at the purpose of the aid money;
2. The money goes to the bureaucrats’ relatives or supporters;
3. A great show is made of the inception of the purposed effort;
4. Third World work ethics – steal as much and do as little work as you can – kick in;
5. The money is spent but the “work” is never more than substandard;
6. American Foreign Service representatives frown at the results;
7. The representatives report to the domestic hierarchy;
8. The aid is increased for the following year;
9. Return to Step 1.

     Am I being an old cynic? Why yes, I am – but it’s a cynicism built from observation over five decades. It’s powered by the dynamic that dominates diplomats and diplomacy. It’s protected by the utter unwillingness of politicians and their high-ranking appointees ever to admit to a mistake. And it’s as close to a law of Nature as any phenomenon that involves unequal categories of human beings.

     But supreme among the conceits of professional politicians is this one: We can do it. We can overrule all the rapacity and all the venality that have made the Third World what it is. We’re The US of A! Besides, I can’t admit that the whole deal is a scam, that foreign aid is a huge, unConstitutional mistake. The voters / my superiors would crucify me in public!

     And billions of dollars taken forcibly from American workers in taxes are poured into Third World ratholes year after year on that basis.

     Do you know a way to stop it without toppling the federal government in its entirety, Gentle Reader? I don’t.