Sticking Blame Where It Belongs

The real culprits at USAID

Last Sunday my pastor spiritually challenged our congregation. The pastor reminded us that the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) recently terminated staff are now struggling for sustenance – and affecting those depending on their livelihood – so we were asked to pray for them.

For those still unaware, USAID was a federal agency within the executive branch established in 1961 to counter Soviet influence in the world by funding supposedly humanitarian programs. As there is nothing so permanent as a temporary governmental program, USAID far outlived the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991 to continue exerting American influence around the globe through targeted infusions of funding in certain programs. Yes, as progressivist media happily shows us, USAID distributed grain to starving villagers in places like northern Ethiopia, but USAID also spent absurd sums of money on projects having absolutely nothing to do with American interests.

As the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security Committee has revealed, USAID gifted $50 million to Tunisia to promote tourism to Tunisia. “Sustainable” tourism to Egypt was promoted at $6 million. $2.1 million was spent to improve border security… in Paraguay. $2 million was spent on gender-transitioning surgery… in Guatemala. Nearly $88 million was spent to promote Afghanistan’s cultivation of poppies, (hopefully) oblivious to the scourge of opioid abuse which is costing Americans dearly in tears and treasure. And my personal favorite, $54 million to the EcoHealth Alliance to conduct gain-of-function research on a v1ru$ called C0vid-19.

Despite all this, our congregation rose to the challenge to pray for the USAID’s workers. The pastor is correct that USAID’s staff bears no blame for USAID’s flagrant excesses. The staff were just people who responded to some advertised job opening, or maybe were recruited from LinkedIn, and came to do a job like any other. Even those more directly responsible for effectuating the USAID’s programs — like ecotourism experts dispatched to Egypt — were merely responding to government’s demand for their expertise. If government turns on the proverbial spigot, you can’t blame those who gather thereunder with bottomless buckets.

That said, those who made USAID’s decisions about what money to spend and where deserve nothing less than our utter contempt. Whilst Americans’ homes and livelihoods were going up in smoke in Los Angeles, as Hurricane Helene was ravaging the Southeast, and as tech-unsavvy elderly Americans wrangled their way onto GoFundMe to finance required medical procedures, USAID was splurging on progressivist pet causes abroad. Well aware that no one would voluntarily choose to fund these programs, USAID’s administrators ensured that no one would ever get the choice by hiding these outlays from taxpayers. Thus the shrill protests now from the left about this exposure. For people who talk big game about the so-called Social Contract whereby the citizenry dutifully pays taxes (“the price we pay for civilization”) in exchange for government’s protection, these progressivists unwittingly reveal themselves as undeserving of any public trust.

Let’s all take a moment to pray for USAID’s workers… that they soon find gainful employment, though far from government.