JFK's prophetic speech against Tea Party nihilism

[HT: Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone]. Wow, the more things change, the more they stay the same!

Below I edited out [...] several sentences and paragraphs of JFK's final, undelivered speech, on November 22, 1963, which is mostly about Cold War nuclear preparedness, the space race, and fighting Soviet encroachment. You can read the entire text here.

Trade Mart Speech (Kennedy's Last Speech)

[...]

This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason -- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternative, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land -- voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the single greatest threat to our security.  At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

[...]

Our foreign aid program is not growing in size, it is, on the contrary, smaller now than in previous years. It has had its weaknesses, but we have undertaken to correct them. And the proper way of treating weaknesses is to replace them with strength, not to increase those weaknesses by emasculating essential programs. Dollar for dollar, in or out of government, there is no better form of investment in our national security than our much-abused foreign aid program. We cannot afford to lose it. We can afford to maintain it. we can surely afford, for example, to do as much for our 19 needy neighbors of Latin America as the Communist bloc is sending to the island of Cuba alone.

[...]

This effort is expensive -- but it pays its own way, for freedom and for America. [...] There is no longer any doubt about the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system. In short, our nation space effort represents a great gain in, and a great resource of, our national strength -- and both Texas and Texans are contributing greatly to this strength.

Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

[...]

We, in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than by choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen waketh but in vain."

U.S. ethanol requirement is costly...and deadly

The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), signed into law by Dubya in 2005 and expanded dramatically in 2007, has increased the price of corn by up to 21 percent. According to Timothy Wise, ethanol now consumes 40 per cent of the U.S. corn crop, up from just 5 percent 10 years ago. 

And people wonder why U.S. foreign aid is "ineffective!"  There is no logic to U.S. policy. On the one hand, we give food aid directly to hungry people, and technical assistance to farmers in developing countries to increase their quality, yields and food security, (see Feed the Future); but on the other hand, we increase the price of this staple food and feed product for the same developing countries. Not only that, we spend $700 billion a year on our military while U.S. farm policy makes conflict-torn countries more unstable and dangerous.  Says Wise:

As I showed in my recent study, "The Costs to Developing Countries of US Ethanol Expansion", the US ethanol programme pushed up corn prices by up to 21 per cent as it expanded to consume 40 per cent of the US harvest. This price premium was passed on to corn importers, adding an estimated $11.6bn to the import bills of the world's corn-importing countries since 2005. More than half of that - $6.6bn - was paid by developing countries between 2005 and 2010. The highest cost was borne by the biggest corn importers. Mexico paid $1.1bn more for its corn, Egypt $727m. 

Besides Egypt, North African countries saw particularly high ethanol-related losses: Algeria ($329m), Morocco ($236m), Tunisia ($99m) and Libya ($68m). Impacts were also high in other strife-torn countries in the region - Syria ($242m), Iran ($492m) and Yemen ($58m). North Africa impacts totalled $1.4bn. Scaled to population size, these economic losses were at least as severe as those seen in Mexico. The link between high food prices and unrest in the region is by now well documented, and US ethanol is contributing to that instability.

President Obama would do well to cancel RFS.  If ethanol fuel standards are what Obama means by an "All of the Above" energy strategy, then I opt for "C. Other."

US corn ethanol fuels food crisis in developing countries

By Timothy A. Wise

October 10, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210993632838545.html

Forgotten history: Twice the U.S. rescued Russia

This one's worth posting in full.  [HT: Sasha.]  I've had several Russians tell me I don't know history, especially World War II history, (true enough), but I never once heard any of them mention these two examples.  It's understandable why their Soviet schools never told them.  Of course most Americans know nothing about it either.  So all y'all git yerselfs edumacated!

Making the Kremlin Queasy: Massive American Aid Has Helped Russians Three Times in the Last Century

By James Brooke

September 25, 2012 | VOA Blogs

As American officials struggle to meet an Oct. 1 deadline for closing the 20-year-old USAID office in Moscow, it is worth looking at America’s other great 20th century aid program to Russians.

In a corner of Public School 1262 in Moscow, there is a one-room, privately run museum, the Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease. It celebrates a crucial act of American generosity largely unknown to Russians.

Under the bland title of the Lend-Lease Act, American taxpayers sent to the Soviet people, from 1941 to 1945, $11.3 billion worth of war supplies. That is $146 billion in contemporary dollars.

This steel river of jeeps, trucks and bombers was neither a loan nor a lease. Franklin Roosevelt chose that title in the hopes of deluding American isolationists who opposed what they saw (correctly) as an outright gift to Moscow.

What did this money buy for the USSR? 3,770 bombers, 11,594 fighter planes, 5,980 anti-aircraft guns, 2,000 railroad locomotives, 51,000 jeeps, 361,000 trucks, 56,445 field telephones, 600,000 kilometers of telephone wire, 22 million artillery shells, almost one billion rifle cartridges, and 15 million pairs of army boots.

Shipped through the North Atlantic, driven up through Persia, or flown in from Alaska, this ready-made war material also freed up 600,000 Soviet factory workers to directly fight the Nazi invaders.

What was the impact of this generosity?

Joseph Stalin, during the Tehran Conference in 1943, said publicly of the American Lend-Lease program: “Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war.”  After the war, the aid became a taboo topic. 

Without it, Adolf Hitler might have enjoyed his planned victory banquet at the Hotel Astoria in St. Petersburg. Then, he might have proceeded with his plan to raze Moscow and turn Russia’s capital into a lake. As a rump Soviet government retreated to the Urals, Hitler might have pursued his grand plan to reduce “excess” Slav populations and convert the Black Soil belt into agricultural plantations devoted to feeding the Third Reich. (Note to Russian neo-Nazis: Sorry to break the news, but the real Nazis wanted your grandfathers dead).

Russian cynics will say the United States needed the Soviet Union to bolster the American war effort.

Au contraire.

Even after Dec. 7, 1941, one current of thought in the United States said, in effect: trade Britain for the Bolsheviks. In other words: Adolf, lay off London. Focus your energies on Moscow. An Anglo-American alliance could learn to live with a Nazi dominated Europe. Our fight is with the Japanese, who attacked Hawaii, and were killing and interning Americans in the Philippines and the Marianas.

Instead, a more generous and liberal American worldview prevailed: free the world from fascism.

It was toward this goal, that my mother worked at a factory building bomb sites outside of New York City, and my father drove a military ambulance in the North African campaign against the Nazis. They were just two of the millions of Americans who volunteered — were not drafted — in the war effort.

Today, American Lend-Lease aid is largely ignored in Russian history books.

It did not fit with Stalin’s self-aggrandizing victory narrative.

After the fall of communism, the Lend-Lease never recovered its place in Russian history books.

There was an earlier precedent.

American aid accounted for the bulk of aid that fed 10 million Russians at the height of the 1921-22 famine. The aid was coordinated by Fridtof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, who was High Commissioner of the International Committee for Russian Relief. This photo, of two boys in fatal stages of hunger, was taken by Nansen in early 1922 and used in pamphlets to win donations in Europe and the United States for food aid to Russia.

American aid accounted for the bulk of aid that fed 10 million Russians at the height of the 1921-22 famine. The aid was coordinated by Fridtof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, who was High Commissioner of the International Committee for Russian Relief. This photo, of two boys in fatal stages of hunger, was taken by Nansen in early 1922 and used in pamphlets to win donations in Europe and the United States for food aid to Russia.

In 1921-22, the United States Congress-funded American Relief Administration helped feed about 10 million starving Russians. Initially, Lenin had refused Western aid. But as the death toll mounted, he relented. American food aid continued through 1923. But American popular support dwindled when it became clear that the Soviet government was exporting its own grain to earn foreign currency, and then asking foreigners to feed Russian peasants.

Soviet textbooks ignored the American aid and glossed over the famine. Largely manmade, this hunger killed about five million people – 10 times higher than any late Czarist era famine.

I bring this up because a similar Kremlin official revisionism is now underway about American taxpayers’ third great aid project to Russia in the last century: the USAID project.

Over the last 20 years, the United States has given $2.7 billion in aid to post-communist Russia. Initially, the aid was designed to stave off severe food shortages. But the bulk was to ease Russia’s transition from a closed society and economy to an open one.

Much of the money went to such building block projects as drawing up a land code, a tax code, promoting small business and judicial reforms.

Over the last two decades, I have known many AID workers in Russia. They came in all shapes and sizes, but seemed to be motivated by a common goal: to see Russia progress from a state-controlled economy and society to an open one.

The program had American support. Year after year, it was approved by the U.S. Congress. Congress answers to the 138 million Americans who pay income tax. If aid to Russia was unpopular, it would have been thrown out years ago.

As Russia’s economy stabilized and grew, the aid shrank. This year, it is $49 million – less than 20 percent of the mid-1990s peak. It increasingly went into health issues – fighting tuberculosis, AIDS prevention, and reducing the abandonment of children.

On one level, the Putin Administration feels Russia has outgrown foreign aid. But, just as Russia seeks foreign investment in factories, foreign aid in health care brings in new techniques and experience. There is no point in reinventing the wheel in either sector. Should Russia throw out foreign car companies and go back to making its own world-beating cars?

On another level, Vladimir Putin feels that Washington is interfering in Russian politics by granting a total of $29 million this year to such civil society groups as Golos, a clean elections group, Memorial, a human rights group, and Transparency International, a corruption fighting group.

Hmm, what does that say about the Kremlin’s attitudes toward clean elections, human rights, and corruption fighting?

The USAID Russia civil society promotion budget is barely 1 percent of USAID’s total $23.8 billion budget this year.

And what does it say, when the Kremlin elephant stands on a stool, and cries ‘eek, eek’ at the sight of a $29 million American mouse?

Today, Russia’s finance minister, Andrei Belousov, announced that Russia’s net capital outflow for the first eight months of 2012 was $52 billion. At that rate, it took three hours to clock $29 million out the door. Presumably, private Russian donors can be found to pick up the slack. Of course that assumes that the Kremlin will allow non-governmental groups to take non-governmental donations.

Kremlin apologists try to persuade the public that Western money is the reason for the protest movement in Russia. But, in a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, 58 percent of Russians believe the opposition protests were home-grown. Only 25 percent believe that foreign powers are behind the protests.

All the same, 20 years of USAID assistance to Russia is being sacrificed on the current altar of anti-Americanism.

In a sign of the times, an American, Marc Schneider, was chosen earlier this month to play the role of Napoleon in the Sept. 2 reenactment of the Battle of Borodino. This 1812 epic confrontation pitted the French dictator’s Grande Armee against the forces of Czar Alexander I.

So while, President Putin and former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing met at the battlefield and talked to reporters about the eternal friendship between France and Russia, a pint-sized American Napoleon swaggered up and down the French lines, urging his troops to kill Russians.

An American Napoleon.

Now, THAT fits the Kremlin’s historical narrative.

On Romney's big foreign aid speech

Romney: "If you teach a man to catch a fish this big..."

Mitt Romney's "big foreign aid speech" in New York yesterday took a lot of U.S. rightwing ideological claptrap and imposed it on nations, and a group of aid professionals, that he obviously doesn't understand.

Take, for example, Romney's work requirement to receive U.S. foreign aid, as if developing countries were filled with lazy welfare recipients sitting on their couches, (or their dirt floors as they case may be), waiting for the U.S. to feed them:

Work. That must be at the heart of our effort to help people build economies that can create jobs for people, young and old alike. Work builds self-esteem. It transforms minds from fantasy and fanaticism to reality and grounding. Work will not long tolerate corruption nor quietly endure the brazen theft by government of the product of hard-working men and women.

How insulting and stupid!  We're talking about nations where "Work or Starve" isn't the Tea Party's campaign slogan, it's their everyday reality. These people need Romney's lectures on the importance of hard work like they need to learn the importance of food.  Neither do they need his hollow injunctions to overthrow their corrupt leaders: easy for you to say from New York, Mitt!  

(UPDATE: A friend of mine said I was taking Romney's words out of context; he was just emphasizing job creation. Maybe so. But the context of his speech in the campaign was what mattered. Development professionals know that the U.S. Government's economic growth programs have emphasized job creation -- often with hard-number job targets -- for decades now.  But average U.S. voters may not.  Hence, Romney's speech gave the false impression that foreign assistance is broken and needs a "new Sheriff in town" to fix it. Thus my criticism of his stating the obvious as if it was something novel is entirely valid.)

In fact, Romney openly regrets the Arab Spring, when people in the Middle East and North Africa proved they would no longer "tolerate corruption nor quietly endure the brazen theft by government."  So, oppressed people of the world, you should realize that Romney's injunction to throw off your yoke of tyranny comes with an asterisk, if you're Muslim.

Next, Romney repeated the commonly-held but wrong view that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the answer to every nation's economic prayers:

We will focus our efforts on small and medium-size businesses. Microfinance has been an effective tool at promoting enterprise and prosperity, but we must expand support to small and medium-size businesses that are too large for microfinance, but too small for traditional banks.

Indeed, in the U.S. and abroad, more and better jobs are created by larger companies, not small (and especially informal) businesses.  And microfinance has a mixed record of success at best, placing many in the developing world in a cycle of dependency on usurious short-term loans to survive and operate their micro-enterprises.  Yet it is a matter of faith on the Left and Right that small business creates all the jobs and wealth.  What the developing world could really use is Big Corporations, er, Big People, investing their big money and offering locals high-paying jobs and innovative technologies. It's too bad that Romney didn't offer any bright ideas from his big business experience on how to accomplish that. (His plans would probably involve massive U.S. layoffs and offshore banks.)

Next, Romney offered us this epiphany: free enterprise is good.  And he said it in such a way to imply that U.S. foreign aid to-date has been about throwing free food and stacks cash off the back of trucks:

A temporary aid package can jolt an economy.  It can fund some projects.  It can pay some bills.  It can employ some people some of the time.  But it can’t sustain an economy—not for long.  It can’t pull the whole cart—because at some point, the money runs out.  But an assistance program that helps unleash free enterprise creates enduring prosperity. 

Gee, really?  This is a variation on the "teach a man to fish" bromide.  First, most aid projects aren't nearly big enough to "jolt" an economy, much less "sustain" it, not for any period of time!  Second, we got Mitt's memo about 40 years ago. Seriously. The foreign aid straw man he is knocking down doesn't exist. Absolutely nobody in the foreign aid world thinks the opposite of what Romney said. Third, this is so silly and condescending to people who have been working on institutional, legislative and regulatory reform in developing nations to "unleash free enterprise" and "enduring prosperity."  Romney should shut up and listen to them!

Finally, we should admit that a lot of foreign aid is just a roundabout payout to U.S. industries.  For instance, U.S. military aid to Egypt (which is 5x greater than all other forms of aid) goes into the pockets of U.S. defense contractors, while it's arguable whether Egypt needs such a well-equipped army.  And food aid is purchased from U.S. farmers, whether or not it's the best way to fight hunger. Meanwhile, as a result of U.S. lobbying, since 1986 the Bumpers Amendment has forbidden U.S. foreign assistance from helping developing nations to increase agricultural commodities that might compete with U.S. crop exports, free enterprise be damned. This is not to mention long-standing "Buy America" clauses in U.S. foreign assistance contracts that make U.S. aid much more expensive to deliver. As a result of this and more, a certain degree of ineffectiveness is built into our foreign aid architecture by Congress.

Overall, Romney's tone was just wrong, and his content was either obvious or needlessly inflammatory. It is now apparent that, similar to Dubya, Romney sees a world of friendly vs. unfriendly nations; free vs. unfree markets; and corrupt vs. non-corrupt.  And based on those categorizations, Romney wants to decide who gets foreign aid assistance.  (N.B.: Dubya already tried this.)

Yes, there is a strong connection between those things and poverty.  That's why the U.S. has supported democracy, human rights and good governance for years now. The trouble is, in unfriendly, unfree and corrupt nations, everyday people aren't allowed to write the laws and make the rules.  Thus, by withholding our development assistance, including technical assistance (i.e. teaching them to fish), which is mostly what we provide nowadays, we would punish average citizens for their leaders' avarice and myopia.  That would not only be unfair to them, it'd be counter-productive to Romney's stated aims. 

Moreover, foreign assistance is often the only direct contact the U.S. Government has with people living in corrupt, unfree, and/or oppressive countries. If we revoke it then we have only finger-wagging and threats to communicate with them, which average people overseas probably won't even hear. Foreign assistance is not just about "effectiveness" in alleviating poverty; it is soft-power diplomacy to demonstrate our commitment to our cherished values.  

To his credit, Romney did note that the U.S. contributes about 25 percent of global foreign aid, and spends twice as much on foreign assistance as any other country. But he didn't mention that America also accounts for 41 percent of the world's military spending, or about 5 times as much as our nearest rival, China.  In budget terms, 1 percent goes to foreign aid vs. 20 percent to the U.S. military.  Is a 20:1 ratio of "guns to butter" in achieving U.S. foreign policy aims indeed out of whack, and in which direction?  Romney has gone on record to increase U.S. military spending; and it looks like foreign aid is under threat.  So clearly, Romney thinks that ratio should be even more disbalanced.    

Romney has made the choice pretty stark.  Now it's up to informed Americans to decide.

Rush and GOP: Living in the 19th century

This is a perfect illustration why conservatives cannot be trusted to run U.S. foreign policy, because they have no comprehension of or tolerance for ambiguity.  If anything is slightly ambiguous, they must push it to absurd polar extremes:

RUSH: Wednesday night on Telemundo, Noticiero  Telemundo. The host is Jose Diaz-Balart. He's interviewing Obama, and Jose says, "Would you consider the current Egyptian regime an ally of the United States?"

OBAMA:  I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy. They are a new government that is trying to find its way. They were democratically elected. I think that, uh, we are gonna have to see how they respond to this incident. Uh, how they respond to, for example, maintaining the peace treaty with Israel. So far, at least, what we've seen is in some cases they've said the right things and taken the right steps. In others, how they've responded to various events may not be aligned with our interests.

RUSH:  All right.  That's psychobabble, and everybody says so. 

See, U.S. foreign aid should only go to allies like Israel who don't need it in the first place and will do what we want anyway.  Never mind that we gave $ billions in military aid to Egypt's dicator Mubarak for 30 years because he kept the peace with Israel while he brutalized Egyptians, and they all knew it.  Now that Egyptian popular opinion matters, we should cut off all foreign aid to "punish" them, cutting off a major source of U.S. influence, according to Rush.  Now we should resort to remote threats and tantrums. Makes perfect backwards sense, doesn't it?

Whereas President Obama realizes that Egypt -- more precisely, its people -- are on the fence with regard to U.S. power, and he doesn't want to cut them off.  But Rush and conservatives do.  And that would accomplish... what?  ... in the most populous Arab country on Earth?  What in the world would official disengagement and diplomatic tantrums from Washington do to influence the people of Egypt, who rightly recognize that the U.S. enabled their oppressor for 30 years, and now must decide if the U.S. has really turned over a new leaf?  F--k 'em, that's Rush's advice.  That's all well and good... if you think we live in a bubble.  But 9/11 showed that we don't.  

The United States will live or die on its adherence to its cherished values and thus its moral authority to lead the Free World.  If we renounce those, if we renounce the idea of America in the pursuit of American interests, then we must rely on naked power to achieve our selfish aims.  Yet we don't have the stomach to follow through on all that that entails -- we are not 19th century Britain (thank God).  And the world is too transparent and interconnected to submit to neo-colonial tyranny by the U.S. or anybody.  We need a new game plan.  Rush and conservatives are living in the last century.  They are clinging to a dead past and bereft of ideas.

New York Times Scrambles to Spin the President's Idiotic Statement on Egypt

September 14, 2012 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

URL: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/09/14/new_york_times_scrambles_to_spin_the_president_s_idiotic_statement_on_egypt

Both sides agree on U.S. foreign aid?

Polls of Americans routinely show that they think anywhere from 10-30 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid programs, when in fact the figure is less than 1 percent.  We get quite a lot in return for that 1 percent, let me tell you.  

But what's the alternative?  Disengagement and withdrawing into our shell; or diplomacy through saber-rattling and threats.  Neither would work.  And our American values won't allow us  (I hope) to engage in flat-out bribery, encouragement of dictators' corruption, and ignorance of human rights like China does.

It's tempting after recent protests in the Mideast and N. Africa for Americans to say, "To hell with 'em."  But if we have no in-country presence besides our embassies and military bases, and nothing to offer but our threats and condemnations, then we won't have a seat at the table, we won't have any direct contact with the people of those countries to demonstrate to them our values and our generosity, and we won't have any soft-power influence over local leaders.  

If America wants to lead the world, it has to do so with many tools in its belt, and foreign assistance must be one of them.

No political football after all?

By Ivy Mungcal

September 12, 2012 | Devex

In the United States, presidential elections are in full swing. The two main political parties have a different tack on foreign aid, according to theirpolitical platforms. Most notably, Democrats hope to increase aid spending while the Republicans want to restrain it.

A top adviser of the Republican standard bearer did tell Devex: Mitt Romney broadly supports development cooperation. So, a doomsday scenario where the foreign aid budget is drastically cut and the U.S. Agency for International Development may not be realistic, after all.

But what about Republican and Democratic voters: How do they perceive the U.S. foreign aid program? Do they want to increase or cut U.S. development spending overseas?

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, the foreign policy opinions of Americans in ‘red’ and ‘blue’ districts are remarkably similar,” according to a new study by a U.S.-based think tank, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “In fact, they are remarkably similar: there is an important difference on only four of the eighty-five questions, while Americans’ opinions coalesce in similar ways on all other questions.”

The study is based on the latest in a series of surveys commissioned by the think tank to assess public opinion on U.S. foreign policy.

Economic aid to Africa is one area where the two groups of voters share a similar view. According to the study, the majority of both Democrats (71 percent) and Republicans (65 percent) support increasing or maintaining U.S. economic aid to countries in the region. They tend to agree that the United States should maintain its level of aid for Israel, a long-time ally in the Middle East.

Democrats and Republicans also share views on Afghanistan and Pakistan: Most said U.S. aid should decrease or stop. Support for aid to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt has dropped since 2010, when the survey was conducted last.

More similarities: A majority of both Democrats and Republicans believes U.S. foreign policy should protect jobs at home, reduce the country’s dependence on oil and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Of course, there are divergences: More Democrats support climate change mitigation, efforts to combat hunger, and a stronger United Nations. Also, more Democrats believe the United States should increase or maintain its aid for Egypt.

This is the latest in a series of surveys and reports that appear to dispel the notion – oft-cited by conservative lawmakers – that the U.S. public opposes foreign aid. The United Nations Foundation, for instance, has found strong support for the global body in its twice-yearly surveys. The Brookings Institution, meanwhile, noted in a 2011 policy brief that “political opposition to aid spending does not arise from the American public.”

Politicians from both sides of the aisle – and aid advocates – should take heed.

Senate: Little to show for $19 billion in Afghan aid

It's extremely hard and expensive to get out and do development work in an active conflict zone, much less ensure proper oversight to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse by grantees, contractors and recipients. The State Dept. and USAID certainly have their work cut out for them there.

USAID has already issued two replies to this critical Senate report. USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah noted that in the past 18 months USAID has tripled its staff on the ground to manage assistance. And as an example of USAID's new focus on contract oversight and compliance, Shah mentioned AED, a 50-year-old NGO that is now laying dead and on the auction block after USAID smacked it down for corruption in Pakistan, (RIP).

UPDATE: "Sold! To the gentlemen from North Carolina!" I missed the announcement June 8 that FHI bought AED.

Afghan Nation-Building Programs Criticized In Senate Report

By Donna Cassata

June 7, 2011 | AP

Afghanistan is at risk of a deep financial crisis when foreign troops leave in 2014 if the United States is unable to overhaul its multibillion-dollar package of nation-building assistance, according to a congressional report that comes as President Barack Obama weighs the size and scope of the initial phase of a U.S. troop drawdown.

The report, completed over two years by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. stabilization programs in Afghanistan have had limited success despite about $18.8 billion in U.S. foreign aid over 10 years – more than any other country, including Iraq.

Misspent foreign aid can result in corruption, alter markets and undercut the ability of the Kabul government to control its resources, said the report, which was posted Tuesday night on the Senate committee's website. The World Bank found that a whopping 97 percent of the gross domestic product in Afghanistan is linked to spending by the international military and donor community.

"Afghanistan could suffer a severe economic depression when foreign troops leave in 2014 unless the proper planning begins now," the report said.

The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development are spending about $320 million a month on foreign aid there, relying on the money to "win hearts and minds." Among the successes has been a sevenfold increase in the number of children attending school and gains in health care.

But the report said the United States must take a closer look at how it spends the money, relying heavily on contractors. The U.S. must do a better job of oversight, especially as it funds more aid through the Afghan government. One recommendation was to standardize Afghan salaries and work with the government on staff limitations.

[Translation: Find another employer for Afghans besides the U.S.-funded Afghan government.]

The panel's Democrats also suggested that Congress implement multiyear aid programs and closer scrutiny of stabilization programs

"Transition planning should find the right balance between avoiding a sudden drop-off in aid, which could trigger a major economic recession, and a long-term phase-out from current levels of donor spending," the report said.

The report came a day before the Foreign Relations Committee's confirmation hearing for Ryan Crocker, Obama's choice to serve as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Crocker is certain to face several skeptical and war-weary lawmakers wondering about the U.S. investment in Afghanistan in the 10th year of the war and after the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Republicans and Democrats are pressing for a robust drawdown of the 100,000 U.S. forces from Afghanistan, expected to begin in July, especially in a time of serious U.S. financial woes. The administration is seeking about $3.2 billion in foreign aid for Afghanistan in next year's budget, an amount likely to be closely reviewed.

Peaceful Mideast change a blow to Al Qaeda

Very interesting analysis. Sometimes what doesn't happen is more significant than what does. Al Qaeda's deafening silence in the wake of the peaceful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt is a great example.

Yet as this piece warns, the gains of peaceful demonstrators could be rolled back; and if they fail; or the military cracks down; and if we don't give peaceful democrats all the support we can, then al Qaeda's silence could be replaced by deadly gloating. They could cite the impotence of peaceful protests as more reason to support violent jihad to overthrow intractable Mideast autocrats.

That's why I was heartened by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's announcement Thursday that the U.S. is committing $150 million (still a drop in the bucket -- about one month's worth of Mubarak-era U.S. aid to Egypt -- and pennies compared to what America is spending in Iraq and Afghanistan) to support democracy and civil society in Egypt.

We can't take our eye of the ball!

Egypt's Peaceful Revolution A Blow To Al-Qaida

By Mike Shuster

February 16, 2011 | NPR

URL: http://www.npr.org/133816008