Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

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The article makes clear that the initiative, though announced by USAID with other partners, was funded primarily by philanthropy.

> The money – most of it from Open Philanthropy – will go to more than a dozen countries from Indonesia and Uganda to Ghana and Peru.

From other sources, I think the US _financial_ commitment was actually pretty minimal ($4M). But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.

https://healthpolicy-watch.news/us-government-commits-4-mill...

"Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force?

If we were just some average-sized middle-income country, then no one would expect that we should play a disproportionate role in helping things at an international level, or that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity.

> But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty?

I think this is a mischaracterization of parent's point. He didn't say it was strange , and he didn't say we had no role to play.

> that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity

This seems largely orthogonal to parent's point, which I would rephrase as "We can't be police and not police at the same time. If your expectations require us to be both, they're bad expectations."

Ok, so ericmay was not entirely explicit and perhaps we read his point differently.

> then I don’t want to hear a peep about us taking any other actions in the world that we deem just

I think the noteworthy peeps are not about the mere fact that we involve ourselves in the world outside our borders but that we often do it pretty badly. We attack Iraq with "shock and awe" over WMDs that do not exist, and create the Abu Ghraib prison. We drone strike weddings. We set up puppet governments ... for a while. We sign up for climate accords and then back out (multiple times).

I read his point as, "if we have an obligation to fix other people's problems, we shouldn't be subject to complaints when our foreign adventures go wrong".

And I think that's crap; we have both an obligation to try to fix the important problems that wealth or force can fix, and we have an obligation to use both carefully and ethically.

> which I would rephrase as "We can't be police and not police at the same time.

To be clear, in this turmeric story, they did an ad/leaflet campaign about the issue, and then Bangladesh's own Food Safety Authority cracked down. This wasn't about the US enforcing its laws or standards anywhere else. Getting involved and helping to solve a problem doesn't need to mean being the police. And I'm not an expert, but I think almost none of the stuff that flowed through USAID was about being "police".

I’m not going to clarify my post too much because it will lead to a more interesting discussion based on the results I’ve seen so far, but I do want to say I specifically had an issue with the notion, however loosely applied, of assigning blame on the American taxpayer.

With respect to your point about foreign intervention, I actually have come about on Iraq and think that it might have turned out OK if perhaps not worth it monetarily or morally (arguably lying to the American public - I don’t think it’s very arguable but I want to leave room for reasonable discussion) because as I see things today - I think the quality of life in Iraq has improved and frankly they are not under the thumb of a brutal dictator. I wish I knew some folks from Iraq to educate me either way.

With that being said - often times our foreign interventions are seen as good/bad but it just depends on who you ask. We think (and I think) arming Ukraine and Taiwan are good policy - is it? What does China or war-torn Ukraine have to say about that (again with respect to Ukraine please note I am a huge hawk on arming Ukraine against Russia and would advocate for direct US intervention to stop the war), but reasonable people can have differences. The point there just being that sometimes it seems obvious that American taxpayer dollars are well spent but not always. We should just be flexible in that understanding. Just don’t try to assign blame for Americans not wanting to pay for XYZ issue. It’s wrong and counterproductive, in my view.

Not that it matters but thanks to both of you for interesting conversation and dialog.

> I read his point as, "if we have an obligation to fix other people's problems, we shouldn't be subject to complaints when our foreign adventures go wrong".

That's a bad faith reading imo. They said "action we deem just" not "things we mess up".

> Getting involved and helping to solve a problem doesn't need to mean being the police.

It generally does when the source of the problem is people. When you're actively preventing people from doing something, that is "policing". Policing isn't just arresting/shooting/bombing, it's the general enforcement of rules.

> And I'm not an expert, but I think almost none of the stuff that flowed through USAID was about being "police".

That's somewhat beside the point, as the source in both USAID and the "policing" is the US government. You dont name your hand and consider it a different person.

Adding because this has somehow been forgotten around Iraq/911. We attacked Iraq because we were attacked on 9/11. Justification for the attack was stated in part because of American troops in Saudi Arabia. American troops were in Saudi Arabia because of Iraq's prior invasion of Kuwait. Changing the government of Iraq would allow us to remove troops from Saudi Arabia and remove it as a cause for terrorism. This was a discussed cause for going into Iraq at the time, just not the main one everyone publically glommed onto. But there was a reason the US wanted to take out Iraq. Iraq was tied to 9/11 by being an indirect motivator of 9/11.

> We attacked Iraq because we were attacked on 9/11

Yes, by 15 Saudis, 2 from the United Arab Emirates, one Lebanese and one Egyptian.

Funny old world.

> The article makes clear that the initiative, though announced by USAID with other partners, was funded primarily by philanthropy.

So, it doesn’t seem like it matters much if USAID was dismantled then.

> But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.

But, if. “Maybe we can make a lot of assumptions about a lot of things and pretend they’re true, and make an argument about it.” Isn’t the play. Not a real point, or something to even debate.

> “Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force.

You completely lost the plot here. You can’t have it both ways. Sure would be pretty neat if _any other country in the WORLD_ stepped up and did… something. Anything. Your argument really died here.

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