Foreign Policy Frozen In Time

Sam and I saw an item while reading the newspaper today (a habit that we probably should give up!) concerning our U.S. government threatening to pull foreign aid out of countries that discriminate against gays and lesbians.

Good grief! Will we never learn that we cannot and should not attempt to dictate to the rest of the world what it must do with the money we give it or tell a country how it should act? I feel like the character in the Frank and Ernest comic strip who is standing in the office of a cryogenics lab asking to be frozen just long enough to “sleep through the election year.”

Our country’s foreign policy is totally screwed up already and there is no way the Republicans will make it any better if they win the White House back.

We try to tell China how to treat its women; we send female secretaries of state to Middle Eastern countries that don’t believe in women holding those kinds of positions - give those bozo sheiks a slap in the face, eh? Why don’t they like us?

We prop up certain dictators then depose them when we decide we don’t like them anymore (Noriega). We haul them here to the U.S. and try them as criminals and throw them in jail. We invade countries (Grenada) that supposedly are treating our citizens poorly and we howl bloody murder when a country like Singapore wants to cane whip one of our badly-behaving citizens. We have young people going to other countries trying to bring back drugs, spying and firebombing governments – because they’re Americans and they seem somehow to feel that they are innocent of criminal behavior because it’s their inalienable right as U.S. citizens to mess in the politics of other countries.

Geez! Who do we think we are?

Our foreign aid to other countries is such a mess. I learned a long time ago, if you’re going to give someone money, don’t make it a loan and don’t expect it to be paid back. Expecting repayment just sets you up for disappointment and anger. It’s better when someone needs money just to give it to them (if you have it) as a gift. Look what happened in Somalia when we thought we should make sure our aid sent there was being properly used.

Remember the old Peter Seller’s movie, The Mouse That Roared? Maybe you don’t remember it because it was first screened in 1959, but this impoverished backward nation, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, declares war on the United States hoping to lose the war so we will bestow some generous foreign aid upon it. The Duchy sends an invasion force to New York (armed with longbows). But alas, the invasion force arrives during a nuclear drill that has cleared the streets. The invasion force only comes across a crackpot scientist with a special ultimate weapon that can destroy the Earth. The invasion force captures the scientist and his bomb, but then they are faced with the dilemma of what to do after winning a war. They can’t help wondering if they have blown – so to speak –their chance of receiving aid.

The movie is a total hoot. If you get the opportunity you should watch it. Sam and I are thoroughly dismayed by our U.S. foreign aid policies but to change them would be like shoveling mass piles of Sam’s poop against the tide – or something.