But if you ascribe even the slightest but of agency to any of the non-Americans involved, you have to wonder if this problem will come back.
But if you ascribe even the slightest but of agency to any of the non-Americans involved, you have to wonder if this problem will come back.
From the article:
> And recently they are celebrating some big news on the lead fighting front: This week, UNICEF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a new $150 million initiative to combat lead poisoning.
Americans have disassembled USAID. The agency of Americans is also contributing to this reccuring.
I’m going to push back very, very hard on ascribing any sort of blame on anyone other than those who are committing these acts. Least of all the American taxpayer, regardless of whether or not dismantling USAID is a good idea.
If the rest of the world is so helpless that all hope depends on Americans to solve even problems such as this and it’s our fault for not doing so, then I don’t want to hear a peep about us taking any other actions in the world that we deem just. You can’t have it both ways.
However, the world playing both sides of the coin on "US World Police" being bad when it does stuff but also bad when it doesn't do stuff is part of how we end up where we are.
It's a minuscule part of our budget, but an easy sell for right wingers to say "well the world isn't grateful for it and its all a bunch of waste so we are killing it" then get if not majority support, less than 50% disapproval.
> The money – most of it from Open Philanthropy – will go to more than a dozen countries from Indonesia and Uganda to Ghana and Peru.
From other sources, I think the US _financial_ commitment was actually pretty minimal ($4M). But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.
https://healthpolicy-watch.news/us-government-commits-4-mill...
"Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force?
If we were just some average-sized middle-income country, then no one would expect that we should play a disproportionate role in helping things at an international level, or that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity.
I think this is a mischaracterization of parent's point. He didn't say it was strange , and he didn't say we had no role to play.
> that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity
This seems largely orthogonal to parent's point, which I would rephrase as "We can't be police and not police at the same time. If your expectations require us to be both, they're bad expectations."
‘In the early 2000s, New York City's health department noticed a perplexing blip: A surprisingly large number of Bangladeshi children in New York City were showing up in their lead database.’
For the cost of the research mentioned in the article, that seems a small sum to pay relative to the result achieved.
‘Soft power’ is not valued by many anymore, but cut it all and it’ll be interesting to look back in a generation or two and see the result.
I’m not actually sure that the juice is worth the squeeze though with respect to your first paragraph and I think you are stretching. The better argument instead is just the appeal to soft power or Conservative “we need to save the world” sensibilities aka Bush Jr. and AIDS for example.
> then I don’t want to hear a peep about us taking any other actions in the world that we deem just
I think the noteworthy peeps are not about the mere fact that we involve ourselves in the world outside our borders but that we often do it pretty badly. We attack Iraq with "shock and awe" over WMDs that do not exist, and create the Abu Ghraib prison. We drone strike weddings. We set up puppet governments ... for a while. We sign up for climate accords and then back out (multiple times).
I read his point as, "if we have an obligation to fix other people's problems, we shouldn't be subject to complaints when our foreign adventures go wrong".
And I think that's crap; we have both an obligation to try to fix the important problems that wealth or force can fix, and we have an obligation to use both carefully and ethically.
> which I would rephrase as "We can't be police and not police at the same time.
To be clear, in this turmeric story, they did an ad/leaflet campaign about the issue, and then Bangladesh's own Food Safety Authority cracked down. This wasn't about the US enforcing its laws or standards anywhere else. Getting involved and helping to solve a problem doesn't need to mean being the police. And I'm not an expert, but I think almost none of the stuff that flowed through USAID was about being "police".
With respect to your point about foreign intervention, I actually have come about on Iraq and think that it might have turned out OK if perhaps not worth it monetarily or morally (arguably lying to the American public - I don’t think it’s very arguable but I want to leave room for reasonable discussion) because as I see things today - I think the quality of life in Iraq has improved and frankly they are not under the thumb of a brutal dictator. I wish I knew some folks from Iraq to educate me either way.
With that being said - often times our foreign interventions are seen as good/bad but it just depends on who you ask. We think (and I think) arming Ukraine and Taiwan are good policy - is it? What does China or war-torn Ukraine have to say about that (again with respect to Ukraine please note I am a huge hawk on arming Ukraine against Russia and would advocate for direct US intervention to stop the war), but reasonable people can have differences. The point there just being that sometimes it seems obvious that American taxpayer dollars are well spent but not always. We should just be flexible in that understanding. Just don’t try to assign blame for Americans not wanting to pay for XYZ issue. It’s wrong and counterproductive, in my view.
Not that it matters but thanks to both of you for interesting conversation and dialog.
For example, look up the role of USAID in the Vietnam war. It was used to fund village self defense forces and the Phoenix program which used targeted apprehension and assassination to combat the Viet Cong. Sure it dug a few wells but net net I don’t think anyone can argue USAID had a positive impact for Vietnam.
USAID is 98% political interference and 2% aid. You’d think people who oppose US interference in other countries would applaud shutting USAID down.
But apparently not.
So, it doesn’t seem like it matters much if USAID was dismantled then.
> But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.
But, if. “Maybe we can make a lot of assumptions about a lot of things and pretend they’re true, and make an argument about it.” Isn’t the play. Not a real point, or something to even debate.
> “Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force.
You completely lost the plot here. You can’t have it both ways. Sure would be pretty neat if _any other country in the WORLD_ stepped up and did… something. Anything. Your argument really died here.
That's a bad faith reading imo. They said "action we deem just" not "things we mess up".
> Getting involved and helping to solve a problem doesn't need to mean being the police.
It generally does when the source of the problem is people. When you're actively preventing people from doing something, that is "policing". Policing isn't just arresting/shooting/bombing, it's the general enforcement of rules.
> And I'm not an expert, but I think almost none of the stuff that flowed through USAID was about being "police".
That's somewhat beside the point, as the source in both USAID and the "policing" is the US government. You dont name your hand and consider it a different person.
I do absolutely agree, it's not your fault that cheaper, dirtier, methods of production are being used, but your lack of standards is a major contributing factor.
This is the reason the EU and UK exclude so much US produce. To allow it would lower local standards too.
You can flail all day but you won't be able to point to another power that preserves that chance for everyone.
I didn't realize all non-American societies were doomed to terrible things if not for the pleasure of America's free handouts' interfering
Imports are regulated, the FDA actually inspects foreign food facilities that are exporting to the US, and outbreaks are carefully monitored and traced back to their origin.