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.
‘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.