The Ugly American

We're not ugly! Just very opinionated and somtimes bossy!  And I fully love and appreciate that we are!  I think some of those countries forget that they wouldn't be where they are without US!

Heya MM, where ya been?

 

Regarding your article, I hear ya.  It seems to be human nature to tear down the tallest tree in the forest.  All the other trees want the light!  But they don't understand that when you tear down the tallest tree, the next tallest tree just takes its place.

 

Once upon a time, I think all the "helping" was done for mostly the right reasons.  these days?  Well, I don't really trust our government anymore, and I don't trust the voters to vote on issues rather than some sort of appeal a candidate has for them.  So, I don't see it getting any better any time soon.  America has become a place where a lot of people believe that no problem is so great that it can't be solved in 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for commercials.

 

 

Americans, in large part, are spoiled rotten.  Even the poorest American doesn't light a candle in the suffering department to some of the people I've seen in the last few years.  Yes, choosing whether to eat out of the Burger King dumpster or the McDonalds dumpster sucks, and it's still a problem that should be fixed, but the poor I've seen are wondering if there is any nutritional value in dirt, and strangely enough are quite happy about their lives.  They don't know any better - literally.

 

The world media loves a good drama, and sadly many of the world's folks tune into TVs to find out what they're supposed to think today.  They eat up the drama about the big capitalist bully because everyone loves the underdog.  Of course this same media spends very little time looking at what we do for that underdog versus what anyone else ever does.

 

In short, I agree.  We oughta just stop and sew up the borders, issue a final "Good luck, folks" to everyone, and start concentrating on ourselves.  Some countries would do just fine.  Others would get invaded immediately and start calling for help.  Who would come, I wonder?

Canada it seems.

MM, I understand the frustration. But it will never happen. We give because that is who we are. Thanks is nice, but never necessary. And in this case, will never happen.

They hate us because we can and do give. Others can and do not. Others cannot and dont. They are not hated because that is expected. But giving without quid pro quo is anathema to the rest of the world, and one of the major reasons we will never be liked. We shine a mirror onto their dark souls, and they hate that.

I too love who we are as a country, but it's time to start taking care of our own.

Thank you for your well thought out response and I agree with you completely {IMAGINE THAT?}

DocG they are going to hate us no matter what we do, I say fuck them, let them get along with America helping for awhile. see if they realize how badly they have misunderstood us all these years!!

I think the problem is that America isn't consistently nice and doesn't really care what the real effect of their aid is.

US aid policy is fairly blatantly focused on a couple of agendas - foreign policy (most government aid), disaster relief (gov and private), medical aid (mostly private) and religious (mostly private) and various less significant relief goals.

Where aid is provided for foreign policy reasons it's likely to be targeted to support US interests. People can tell when this is happening. When a third-world dictator gets a governance grant and spends it on internal security, people know who to blame. When a democracy's opposition party gets a massive war fund courtesy of the US government, everyone knows who's responsible and why. This is problematic, but I suppose the thinktanks believe the short-term benefits are worth the long-term discontent. They may be right.

Disaster relief and medical aid are usually fairly popular, but they come with the caveat that they give skilled workers inside the country a desire to leave it (local doctors often abscond with foreign-trained doctors after working with them for a while, crippling the local health industry). So while an obvious positive, there's always that slight negative tinge.

Religious aid creates problems. This is its purpose. When you go forth into a country and spread the word, you're going to cause discontent among those who don't like change, those who don't like your religion and those who are easily provoked. Missionaries can be an ideal fit for a community, but it's not that common, and when it isn't you can turn the entire community against outsiders. Still, where the aid provides useful skills (like schools or hospitals) it can be popular.

Similarly, food aid is a terrible blow against third world farmers. Why? Because every bushel of rice or wheat provided as food aid comes in at a price no farmer can match. So they go out of business as they can't sell their crops. Then the country continues to starve because it can't sustain a farming industry but doesn't have the foreign capital to trade for food, nor the connections to sustain a constant feed of free food. So the farmers get angry at America for flooding their markets and destroying their livelihoods. Then they move to the cities and join the angry and disaffected slum dwellers, where unemployment further degrades the love for the outside world.
However, food aid can save a life. The line between give a man a fish and teach a man to fish can be difficult to get right.



It wouldn't be a terrible idea. I don't know if the American people could handle it though.

Cacto, while there is a kernel of truth in your response, it goes beyond that. You list "rules" as if they were absolute, when in truth they are isolated incidents that have no bearing on the over all policy. You cannot name any of your rules applied to Indonesia, or even attached to Myanmar.

No, the "rule" you do not mention, and the one that is overarching, is envy. While the old saying of "beggars cant be choosy" is true, it is also true that the beggar does not have to like the choice, and indeed, is often resentful of it.

It is nice to critique the largess of the American people. As indeed, I would expect no less. Yet 2 things immediately come to mind in your critique.

1. Are you going to cut off your nose to spite your face? That is what some are going to do. The "strings" that you mention are hardly iron wires, but more like silk threads. Easily borken, and only pie crust promises to start with (how many times have we seen a thug make promises to get aid, only to break it when they turn around?).

2. YOu have a nice litany of America's sins. Where is your list of the sins of the other nations? I dont blame you for not listing them. After all, it is hard to provide a list of sins for a nation that is nowhere to be found when the going gets tough (and just so you know, this is not mentioning Australia as they seem to go above and beyond their duty in all emergencies as well - and are notable for it because of their uniqueness outside of America in doing so). There is a reason that the old cliche of "no one criticizes the man who does nothing" applies in this case. If you never have any accomplishments, who is going to waste time critcizing nothing?

All I want tlo know os when did it become out job to feed someone a fish, let alone teach someone how to fish>?

I await the answer to that one docG, great question!! btw!!

man this is gonna be a lengthy reply. Sorry ahead of time!

This aid often has much more benefit for the donor than the recipient. Let's look at how this has gone down many, many times in the past:

Donor nation (that's us) goes to poor nation with offer of 45 billion dollars. However, donor nation will not give the money to the poor nation unless the poor nation passes laws that de-nationalize most of it's public owned companies. This means electrical, water, phone, rail, airports, mines etc. Also, donor nation will not give aid to the recipient unless recipient agrees to little or no tax on foreign companies, and change their laws so that foreign companies can come and go as they please (this means they can take their profits out of the country)

Recipient country makes changes that are demanded of them, then get their big chunk of change. Most of this money, they are told, is needed to "develop" their country. They have been told in advance that in order to join the big boys of the 21st century they need more power generation, better airports, and maybe a couple of big spa resorts (or mines, whatever).

Recipient nation takes this money that was loaned to it, and gives a big chunk of it to big engineering firms located in the donor nation. These are companies like Bechtel, Fluor, Halliburton, etc. These big companies come in and do do the job as promised to build facilities and infrastructure and they are paid handsomely to do it. The remainder of this money quite often will go to buy some shiny toys for the military (also purchased from companies in the donor nation) and then of course some gets spread around the top levels of leadership in the recipient nation (this is corruption, gotta love it)

Still with me? Good. So,  now we have a poor country with a big shiny new airport/electrical grid or mine. And, tens of billions of dollars of debt they now have to pay back (the money basically left the donor nation but then returned through different channels. But recipient still has to pay it back) The theory is that with this new development suddenly the country will start raking in massive profits to repay the debt. What actually happens is quite different. Remember all those strings attached to get the aid in the first place? Now foreign companies start moving in and buying up all the industries that were formerly publicly owned. Again, big companies like Bechtel and Fluor move in and buy the water system, the heating company, just about anything that isn't bolted down. Sounds good, only the nation also passed laws allowing foreign companies to move their money as they please. This means the money that these companies make doesn't stay in the local economy, it all gets carted back overseas (to the donor nation) as well.

Recipient still has to pay back all that money though. In order to make just the interest payments on it, they have to cut their spending to the bone. Social programs, welfare, retirement pensions all of that gets cut. Large sums of their taxpayer dollars (most of which is produced locally, remember they had to cut their taxes on foreign business earler) has to go to pay for a debt that was spent on foreign companies, that other foreign companies are now profiting form. In fact the only thing that stays the same or increases is military spending, as all those foreign companies now buying up the country like to have protection and there's lots of ordinary people now unhappy that their country is crumbling around them while they've been cut out of the picture. Quite often the recipient nation will still be unable to make payments, so donor nation says "no problem.... we've always wanted an air base/naval port in that part of the world you know" that, or they want further privatizations like the oil company, etc.

So, to summarize the kind of "aid" we're giving them, it's that only in name. In reality the aid is a temporary influx of money or material that only stays in country for a very short period of time, the fruits of which profit our companies while the recipient nation still has to foot the bill. It means big profits for our companies and big misery for the average person living in these countries as they watch what little national pride that does exist get bought up by big foreign business at fire sale prices.

One such real world example happened in Bolivia. Bechtel (big company in the U.S) purchased the water company, and promptly increased their rates so that basic access to water cost 25 % of the average monthly income. In a dirt poor country like this, the people simply couldn't pay. In this case, the company was too greedy and crossed a line- in response the people literally shut down the capitol and rioted in the streets. The government was so terrified of being ousted that they forced Bechtel out of the country and set water rates to something that people could afford. You know, so they could drink and all.

So when you ask why people see America as big and bad, it's quite often because of examples like what happened in Bolivia. The people there remember all too well the time that they couldn't have access to potable water because an American company took over and charged unaffordable rates.

Part two of my response to come! 

I never said it was. But when you do give people fish, they're not always going to be as appreciative as you would like.

Hell, I can live without us appreciated, it would just be nice if we weren't hated for it.

Unfortunately life isn't that simple. I've helped people personally and seen the hate it engenders. Many people can't handle the idea that they need help, and they resent that need and displace it onto their helper. It's just something people do.
It doesn't help that aid policy is nearly always carried out in the national interest of the aiding country (AusAID's mission statement/motto is "Assisting developing countries reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development, in line with Australia's national interest"), but you can't expect aid to make others like you.
When you force someone to think about you, it's very difficult to make sure they'll think positive thoughts. I don't think the US has access to the kinds of minds that can make that possible.

I hope it was only help they wanted.

I can understand the negative reactions to aid done mainly for foreign policy reasons and definitely the religiously motivated aid; but people complaining about disaster/medical/food relief is just plain looking a gift horse in the mouth. Oh, sure it might drive the local growers out of business, but (as you mentioned) the alternative is letting people starve. Maybe we should make the recipients work tilling soil to make more arable land to earn the food, or make them attend classes on modern agriculture techniques, etc... If we did, they would probably complain about that. We don't require them to do that, but if they did, the negative effects might disappear. Perhaps that is the real problem, you can't help people that won't help themselves.

Maybe I am selling some places short. I am sure there are a few places we helped that are success stories. But that too is kind of the point here, we don't hear about the success stories, and the drastic failures try to pin 100% of the blame on us...and almost all cases ignore the problems in the helped people's government and/or society that may have led to the original problem in the first place.

Setarcos, two things:

1) That gift horse almost always has strings attached, though this is rarely publicized. These are not altruistic strings either. Remember the Tsunami that killed several hundred thousand? Much of the "generous" aid contributed by G8 countries came with requirements that the recipient countries open up their economies to foreign business, remove subsidies and protections allowing for companies to move in and buy up undervalued assets at fire-sale prices. This is nothing new.

2) Many of these countries do have enough arable land and agriculture techniques (or aquaculture) to feed their people. The thing is, much of that arable land is growing cash crops like tobacco or coffee beans for export. This is another requirement that we, in our abundant generosity have foisted on many countries. So now that much of their good arable land is growing cash crops and then leaving the country, they are forced to import staples like rice, corn and wheat from other countries.

But don't take my word on it... I would recommend a book called "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. Author Chalmers Johnson has his American Empire trilogy which quite painstakingly has catalogued many of the sins of empire. Last but not least I would recommend "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. His book details how much of the aid doled out by developing countries, once the news cameras have turned away, has many, many strings attached which often make the aid far more profitable for the donor than the recipient.

It is sad but true. WHile the giver does not force the givee to think, the givee resents the fact they have to recieve, and thus they "think" about the giver.

I am aware that many forms of aid come with strings attached. The tsunami aid you talk about. Did it really come from the countries or did it come from their businesses/private organizations? I myself was speaking of governmental or charitable aid.


Kind of begs the question, why did they need the aid in the first place?


I've read a few, though not any of the ones you mentioned. I took a 400 level Sociology course called "Globalization" as an elective to satisfy general degree requirement. Wow, and I thought I was a liberal. While I am sure there have been wrongs done on both sides of the deals, most accounts I have seen are incredibly biased towards the "victims", and the few accounts that are fair to both sides are decried as corp/gov propaganda.

Artysim, you have very successfully changed the point from aid to loans without any transition. America as a government does not provide loans to nations it provides grants. The IMF provides loans, the IMF is run by Europeans but funded by many industrialized nations including our own.

After WWII America alone rebuilt Europe and Japan, Germany and Japan would still be a burned out shells if we had not. France would still be a third world nation because it just bends over and smiles when invaded. Americans tax dollars paid to build up these nations and at every turn when we needed help all except Great Briton has told us to go pound sand. In the 70’s when America was on the verge of bankruptcy those nations still demanded we provide them free money and not one nation we helped offered a coin to help us. We have never asked for these nations to pay us back the billions we gave them. They have never offered to pay it back. France, the most ungrateful nation led by De Gaul, at the time took the aid rebuilt his nation and then told us to screw ourselves. It was not bad enough that he and his nation did not support us during the cold war against the Soviet Union, France went one step further by providing arms and aid to countries we were fighting including Viet Nam a war they started then begged us to come in and help them win. When we refused they were hurt but could do nothing more to us than help arm the Vietnamese when Kennedy chose to go in and fight the war. Thanks a lot France!

Europe starts wars we finish them and then pay for the clean up. We don’t ask for thanks and we don’t ask them to repay us. We do gently suggest they not get in our way. This is called being the big bully on the block.

From a business point of view how many times has an American company spent billions of its resources developing a mine or an oil field only to have the host nation nationalize the property kick our people out and keep the profits then sell the goods at inflated prices to the company that built the mine or oil field? Would it not be prudent to put a few strings on grant money to protect our own companies?

The problem with America is that we are suckers for any sob story. A civil war breaks out and people are starved to death. The people demand we go in and save them. We go in and feed them and stop the fighting and then the war resumes. People expect us to be there to help when it is not our job or responsibility to do so. We do it anyway because we are soft headed and soft hearted.

I admit that during the cold war we helped out people just to gain allies but that time has past we need to wean them from our national tit. We also need to go back to the good old bad old days. Where if you messed with an American your life was forfeit and your nation was punished, kill an American citizen and people with guns came in to inquire why. We stopped doing that in the 70’s and guess what? We started getting attacked. The Soviet Union had three of its citizens kidnapped by terrorist in the 80’s the KGB found a relative of one of the kidnappers and took him then started sending body parts back until they got their people back. They were returned unharmed. Barbaric? Yes, but it worked and the Soviet Union only had three people kidnapped ever by terrorist. We on the other hand wring our hands and ask nicely if they would please release one of our generals and they hung him. They did not fear us and they still do not fear us so they will continue to mess with us. We will still go after a nation but we stopped going after small groups and they know this.

Last I checked, business/private organizations do not own Carrier Task forces.

The Little Red hen and the rest of the barnyard flock (europe).

Yes, but I am sure there has been forms of private/non-governmental aid as well. Artysim, seemed to be lumping government aid, charitable aid, and aid from a country's businesses into the same category. Pushing the guilt of the bad onto to all, including the completely altruistic.

Yes, presidents Bush and Clinton worked together to raise millions in private funds for that disaster at the behest of the current president Bush because we can get more done through private funding than through our government or any government. Our military provided the transportation of the goods purchased with private funds. Has anyone offered a vote of thanks to the private citizens that gave with an open heart? Nope.

Just for the record the Kurds spent millions in advertising thanking America for invading Iraq and freeing them from the tyrant that was running the nation. I appreciated and liked seeing the commercials. So after 90 years of fighting and dying for the freedom of other nations we have Australia, the Kurds, Philippines, and the United Kingdom as the only countries that have bothered to thank us. Don’t get me wrong when I lived in France individuals would express their appreciation for what we did but not the government, the same was true when I was in Spain, Portugal and the Soviet Union.

He seenmed to be negating the government aid in totality, instead saying that almost all (it may have even been most, I do not know) was coming from individuals, when the truth is that many governments gave lots of aid. Perhaps not in dollars in hand, but in service and supplies.