Andres Oppenheimer The Miami Herald

February 13, 2011

Andres Oppenheimer
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: “Aid Cuts Could Be Diplomatic Suicide” – Some comments on why xenophobia is making a much needed come back thanks to your article in today’s Miami Herald.

Snr. Oppenheimer,

You say

“My opinion: While the United States is the world’s
largest donor in dollar terms, it is already one of the
stingiest of the world’s richest countries in terms of
the size of its economy: it gives out only 0.2 per cent
of its gross domestic product in foreign assistance
compared with one percent for Sweden.”
The Miami Herald
Page 7A
Today
You

Lies. Damn lies. Statistics.

I am reminded of the restaurant in Paris with a sign advertising rabbit/horse stew. The waiter said it was 50/50. One horse and one rabbit.

If the United States were to increase its aid to the same percentage that the altruistic Swedes give how much would that be in absolute dollar terms?

If the Swedes were to double their amount, that is to say 1% to 2%, how many kroners would that be?

Could it not be argued that if my right foot is in a bucket of ice and my left foot is in a blazing fire place I would, on balance, be comfortable?

Constructing universals from particulars is akin to fingernails on the blackboard for anyone familiar with Logic and Rhetoric. Since it is empirically self evident that you have no knowledge of either I can continue apace.

You quote Congressman Eliot Engel [D-NY], as prototypical a modern American Liberal who ever preached the virtues and blessings of “Rainbow Stew” in Congress, as saying that cutting foreign aid is “penny wise and pound foolish”.



History, that cruel mistress of the inconvenient truth that facts are hard things, suggests otherwise.

How much money, weigh it or count it, has this country put down the rat hole that is Africa in the last 50 years?

10 Presidents from both parties and what do we have to show for it?

Zimbabwe? How about the at least 5 countries that have slavery? How about the charnel house that the Tutsis and the Hutus killed each other in? They did it such numbers that the UN had to fly in foreign crocodiles, the domestic ones having, for once, been sated. How many “success” stories are there in Africa? Why is it my fault? How can more of my money make poor Africans rich?

I search in vain for a Madison, a Franklin, or a Jefferson. I look for the fine hand of an Edmund Burke or the restraining hand of a George Mason. Instead, I find Idi Amin, Emperor Bokassa, Omar Bongo, Samuel Doe, inter alia. Special note should be made of Robert Mugabe. He turned a breadbasket of Southern Africa into the dark side of the moon in less than 10 years. Now you want me to give him more money?

The inmates are running the asylum. The boobies are now in charge of the hatch.

As an alumnus of the Peace Corps, as one actively involved in the original Alliance for Progress, I ask what has changed in Latin America in the last 50 years.

Other than the continuing problems of breakfast, lunch, and dinner it looks like the Castro Brothers, deo volente, have finally got their prison on the path to prosperity. That’s a joke. Is it not passing strange that on an island, surrounded by water, said water being overflowing with fish, this country is a mendicant on the world stage? When was the last time you saw a fat Cuban? In Havana?

Argentina is almost 200 years old. It is a country blessed by God with resources that makes other countries drool with envy. Their national heroine was a hooker. The only permanent contribution they have made to the Western Canon is the tango. I speak too quickly. They stole that from the Eyeties.

You can’t imagine the shame I feel when you wrote that Hugo Chavez is outspending this country in the reconstruction of Haiti.

Perhaps you can tell me why Haiti makes the Dominican Republic – they are on the same island, remember? – look like Switzerland.

Is it because the United States has not been “fair” to them?

I began my note to you with a horse reference.

I’ll end it in a similar fashion.

Your contributions to reasoned discourse are both Homeric and Herculean.

I hereby name you


HORSE’S ASS OF THE WEEK



Kevin Smith



PS – I no longer care what the man in the street – assuming they have streets – in Paraguay or Chad thinks of America. One suggestion we can all get behind, one suggestion that is specifically authorized in our Constitution would be to authorize letters of marque and reprisal and rid the seas of pirates. Shoot most of them. Take the rest of them into what passes for a port in those Hellhole countries that shelter them and hang them from what passes for a yardarm. What better form of foreign aid than that which allows the free flow of commerce?