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USAID: Can It Get Back to Promoting American Soft Power?
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is a Cold War relic that has been allowed to metastasize into some sort of woke monster, racked with corruption as if squandering money grabbed ahold of the organization and shook it like the norovirus. USAID’s time has passed and it deserves the quick death Elon (“feed it into the wood chipper”) Musk seems to have in store for it. But is there a baby in the bathwater to watch out for?
My own experience with USAID was in Iraq some 15 years ago when I led two Provincial Reconstruction Teams there for the State Department. My so-called team of heroes included a contractor representing the vast money pool that was USAID. Then, like now, the USAID money followed America’s foreign adventures; whereas once Iraq was the number one recipient of foreign aid money, today is it Ukraine which is the big winner; in 2023, USAID funding represented approximately 0.7 percent of the U.S. federal budget. In 2021, before the war in Ukraine, it accounted for only about half that.
The USAID rep in Iraq was a nice enough guy — he probably meant well — but it was only later I found out he was so quiet in meetings because he was ordered by USAID higher-ups not to tell anyone at State what he was working on for fear we’d meddle somehow. When a local Iraqi town council complained about a corrupt building contractor siphoning off funds designated for rebuilding homes, the USAID guy swore no knowledge of the project. I knew it was not a State or Army Civil Affairs piece of work, but a little embarrassed checking with the Iraqis (!) revealed it was indeed AID. My efforts to get their Inspector General or even an intern to look into things met with stonewalling until finally I was invited to a nice sit-down lunch at the USAID compound in Baghdad with a senior staffer and told to mind my own business, that no one would be looking into the project, things needed to move ahead, go find something else to do, there was plenty of war around for everyone. The Iraqis, too, learned a valuable lesson in American soft power: the Americans were willing to overlook outright fraud to get a nice photo-op and tic another To-Do box done. That kind of thing was often the case with USAID — things were designed to look good for the head office, not necessarily to benefit anyone on the ground.
Back in 2025 I laughed out loud when I read how USAID funded LGBT plays and transgender comic books and the like, woke little projects that were packaged for Washington not Peru or Guatemala. USAID (and State) did the same in Iraq, only we had not discovered the fertile ground of the LGBT community then; our mid-2000’s version of wokeness was toward women. It was considered part of democracy building that those women throw off their headscarves and rush out to open businesses and vote. So in parallel with USAID we magically tried to create entrepreneurs out of housewives, at least long enough for some photos, and yes, staged a few plays about female empowerment. A special program was devised to tell Iraqi women to vote, and to vote their own opinions not those of their husbands. That might have at least been justifiable if it had worked. It didn’t; it was drawn up in a way to appeal to Washington, not the literal, real-life goatherders who populated our area.
My view of USAID in Iraq was not comprehensive, but confirming. I saw nothing that wasn’t a gross caricature of our foreign policy. Things from 2015 and the goofy woke programs of 2025 are cousins.
So what happened to USAID? The Cold War ended is what. The organization was founded in 1961, near the height of the Cold War, as a way to fight back against the Russians in the developing world. The idea was to push American influence out past the battle lines of the military, past the diplomatic front lines, into the towns and villages of the people we were trying to affect away from similar efforts being made by the Soviets. The most likely American the people would see would not be wearing a green uniform or a cheap blue suit, but instead be providing food, medicine, and schooling for them.
But with the urgency of the Cold War behind it and the New World Order mission muddied, fringe political ideologies were imposed on USAID. The agency’s funding was corrupted, with grants going to radical causes. It became “a shadow government piggy bank for far-left causes.”
Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, knows. “While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements,” he wrote. In 2021, he said the Biden administration used the agency to prop up a communist protest movement in San Salvador to oppose his government. He released WhatsApp messages from administration officials as evidence of the meddling in his country’s democratic process.
Perhaps the best illustration of how USAID has misused its funding, the New York Post reports, is found in the Middle East.
“In 2024, as the region reeled from the aftermath of the bestial atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel the previous year, the United States significantly boosted its financial support for projects in Gaza and the West Bank, spending more than $200 million of American taxpayers’ money in territories already rife with terrorist incitement and activity. The respected Israeli research organization NGO Monitor pointed out that as the U.S. government ‘dramatically increased funding’ for these various projects, it ‘drastically decreased transparency.’ These grants were made to what USAID called ‘miscellaneous foreign awardees.’ You wouldn’t know from the opaque accounting process that beneficiaries included local partners who praised the October 7 onslaught.”
Not comprehensive — it is just one more example — but confirming. There is nothing that isn’t a gross caricature of our foreign policy. The problems with USAID I saw in Iraq a decade and a half ago are the same problems it has today. This is not a hill for Democrats to die on. The agency was long overdue for a gutting, and Musk is the man to do it.
Pointless “democracy initiatives” and woke comic gay books amounted to $1.58 billion of USAID funding in 2023, granted only a small portion of the agency’s $42 billion annual budget. But that attracts outsize attention. The agency in 2023 also provided more than $1.9 billion in food aid. They delivered HIV treatment, maternal care, and combated malaria. America needs these kinds of soft power tools, for their own sake and to compete with growing efforts by China. Critical functions of USAID, Secretary of State Marco Rubio already indicated, will persist. Foreign aid broadly, he stressed, must be “in furtherance of and aligned with the national interest and foreign policy of the United States.” This is similar to what Warren Christopher believed, when he tried unsuccessfully to bring USAID into the State Department during the Clinton administration (so none of this is new, Democrats.) Hopefully those worthwhile programs can be continued under USAID’s new owners at State and the organization, now under the control of Rubio, can get back to its real roots promoting American soft power.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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Rich Bauer said...
1Can’t take Peter’s concern about wasteful AID billion spending seriously when he was totally in the bag for the illegal US Iraq War, which killed about a million. Maybe he should return the blood money he got for his service there. Right. Billions is chump change. I was gonna say Chicken feed, but given the price of eggs in Trump’s inflationary disaster…
Speaking of disasters, The Iraq War cost the United States over $2 trillion, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University. This figure includes military spending, veterans’ healthcare, and interest on debt. The war also had a devastating human, social, economic, and environmental impact. The interest on that unpaid debt makes the entire State budget look like chicken feed.
02/19/25 8:56 AM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
2Can Donnie Dementia get back to doing something about the issues Americans care…like INFLATION?
Gallup, which has tracked the opening approval ratings for American Presidents going back to Dwight Eisenhower, found Dementia’s approval rating dipped 47% in late January to 45% in mid-February. That is 15 points lower than the historical average of all other elected Presidents at this point in their first terms since 1953, according to Gallup’s polling. The poll found a majority of Americans don’t like how Trump is handling the economy, with 54% disapproving, and foreign trade, with 53% who disapprove.
Donnie’s demented MAGA Party controls everything, but the poor simp still blames old Biden for inflation. MAGA has the memory of a goldfish, but it does remember Dementia promised he would reduce inflation on Day 1. Hopefully inflation can be controlled under Donnie D and his MAGGOTS in Congress and the Senate now under the control of MAGGOTS so we can get back to its real problems and promote American buying power. But excuses ain’t something MAGA will buy.
02/19/25 3:36 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
3Notice that paranoia about rigged elections and the bad ol Deep State has suddenly gone from MAGA Fox propaganda? AID is the big threat? Speaking of big threats, Prezidunce Musk has fired all the Bird Flu scientists. Wait until the diseased chickens come home to roost on the egghead in 2026.
02/20/25 10:09 AM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
4Musk Rat Love Bites Trump in his Ars
Prezidunce Musk is now about as popular as his Cybergarbage truck. CNN poll shows Americans oppose his plan for tariffs on aluminum and steel by 15 points (49-34), while the Post-Ipsos poll shows nearly 2-to-1 opposition to his 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada. About 7 in 10 Americans think tariffs generally increase the price of products in the United States.
Musk’s indiscriminate firing of federal workers isn’t going over well, either. The Post poll shows it opposed by 19 points (58-39), and 62% are against the purge of USAID, in particular. Peter must have missed that.
By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, those polled thought Musk DOGE was a “bad idea.” CNN’s poll shows 54-28 against Musk, while the Post shows 52-26 against. Meanwhile, 63% to 34% of Americans are worried about Musk’s team having access to private information.
Now Demented’s handlers are disavowing every knowing Musk. The Canadians are revoking his Canadian citizenship as he is now working for a hostile government. Poor Elon, kicked out of the White House, disavowed, facing investigations for conflict of interest. Musk vs. Trump. Put these two rats in a cage and hope they bite each other in the ars.
02/20/25 12:35 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
5Speaking of dickheads, some ambulance chaser posing as a real attorney in DC and who approved supreme dickhead Donnie pardoning thugs who really threatened law enforcement on Jan 6 is threatening people who dare to call Elon Musk a dickhead. Gee, Peter got banned from Tweetville for mockingly suggesting some guy should have his face ripped off. Anyway, he writes:
Dickhead: As United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, I receive requests for information and clarification. I take these requests seriously and act on them with letters like this one
you are receiving. At this time, I respectfully request that you clarify your comments from February 12, 2025. During a live interview with CNN, when asked how Democrats can stop Elon Musk, you spoke clearly: “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.”
This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk – an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you call a “dick” – and government staff who work for him. Their concerns have led to this inquiry. We take threats against public officials very seriously. I look forward to your cooperation with my letter of inquiry after request. Thank you in advance for your assistance. Please respond by February 24, 2025. Should you have further questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to call my office or schedule a time to meet in person.
There is a real threat here…from the dickhead who wrote the threatening letter. And do we have to prove Elon is not a dickhead?
02/20/25 10:49 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
6American government “soft power” has always been the ability to tell its idiot citizens to believe the weirdest lies, such as Vietnam was going to attack the dumbest country on the planet after it attacked Australia, or Iraq had nuclear-tipped missiles about to destroy US, or USAID has been allowed to metastasize into some sort of woke monster, racked with corruption. This week Donnie Dementia is telling his idiot supporters Ukraine started the war.
Is there corruption? Is water wet ? Of course, money attracts corruption like shit attracts flies. But don’t blame AiD. Most foreign aid is managed by the Pentagon. Is it corrupt to spend money on Iraq that you trashed? Is it corrupt to spend money on Ukraine that you promised to support if it gave up its nuke arsenal? Would Russia have attacked Ukraine if it could send a nuke into Putin’s Palace?
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago, Ukraine has received $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid and $5 billion in development assistance. This money has helped rebuild civilian infrastructure damaged by Russian attacks, build more shelters, and provided assistance to injured and internally-displaced civilians, among other things. Perhaps more importantly, the Ukrainian government has received more than $30 billion in direct budget support from USAID. As Ukraine’s economy shrank and budgets were redirected to the country’s defense, USAID essentially allowed the government to sustain its operations, helping pay state workers salaries and provide state services.
Without corruption the whole political system of the dumbest country on the planet would collapse overnight. AID comes at relatively marginal cost to Americans, with the agency’s total annual budgets being consistently around 0.5 percent of total federal spending. Chump change.
02/21/25 1:29 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
7Now Donnie Dementia thinks there isn’t any gold in Ft. Knox. That is RICH for a crook selling crypto fraud to his idiot supporters. The guy thinks he is some master criminal mind now. IT WOULD MAKE A GOOD MOVIE: GOLDLITTLETINYFINGERS.
02/21/25 10:27 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
8Speaking of “soft power”, Donnie Dementia needed Viagra 20 years ago to have sex with a porn star. Today the old man’s “soft power” couldn’t stand up to the Maine governor, who has more balls than him.
02/22/25 9:37 AM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
9BREAKING NEWS: An email attributed to PREZIDUNCE Musk was sent to all federal employees demanding they respond to a link in two days or be fired. DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK. THIS IS A SCAM BY RUSSIAN CYBER CROOKS TO INFECT EMAIL SYSTEMS. IF YOU CLICK ON THE LINK, YOU WILL BE FIRED.
02/22/25 10:18 PM | Comment Link
Doc said...
10Of course the naysayers won’t really read it, but it’s very correct. Yet another project that started in goodness ended up being abused. It’s time that it is made public. For those that complain that we shouldn’t stop AID because there are other things to stop, they should be happy that something is actually happening. Can’t fix decades of problems in a single day.
02/23/25 5:36 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
11“USAID’s time has passed and it deserves the quick death Elon (“feed it into the wood chipper”) Musk seems to have in store for it.”
Yo Prezidunce Musk, the ol,woodchipper is a Fargo conclusion for your email resignation threat.The FBI, State and DoD management have each sent your federal resignation email to a quick death of its own. The bureaucracy of the federal government is a bigger threat than the dreaded Deep State. These overpaid often useless managers don’t allow Prez Musk taking their power away. They have sent email messages and instructed workers to “please pause any response to the [Office of Personnel and Management] email titled ‘What did you do last week.'”
The message from the DoD is just the latest sign of tension between Musk and officials appointed by Trump to run the government, as one source told the Washington Post last week that “every cabinet official is sick of him.”
If he keeps making ignorant mistakes, Prez Musk is gonna get an unsatisfactory rating. It is extremely rare event in the federal government, almost as rare as Donnie Dementia going a day without shitting his bed.
02/23/25 7:11 PM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
12Prezidunce Musk sent an email over an unclassified server suggesting layoffs of a number of CIA employees who were on probationary status due to being recent hires — which included the first and last names of covert agents. Making matters worse, some U.S. embassy positions that are actually filled by CIA officers under cover may now be at risk of being revealed — potentially angering the host nation and exposing companies or endangering CIA assets who are known to have met with past occupants of the role.
Oops Op.
02/24/25 10:17 AM | Comment Link
Rich Bauer said...
13Prezidunce F-ELON Musk putting Trump’s economy in the wood chipper.
Considering the poor recent business performance of F-Elon, the MAGA money boys are getting real nervous. Twitter has lost 50% of its value since Musk bought it. Tesla is down 20% in the past year. F-Elon’s plan to deport 11,000,000 workers and fire 300,000 federal employees has crushed consumer confidence to recession levels. Even Bitcoin is getting worried.
But wait, it gets worse, because the recent pause in federal spending threatens the stability of many, many more people. Take, for instance, farmers and ranchers. They’re MAGA voters, mostly, but this may push many of them into bankruptcy, since they depended on government programs to pay for farm upgrades they already made. The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, means that an agricultural buyer who dropped $2 billion into the sector is now gone. Rural areas broadly rely on federal funding, of course.
AND yet It gets worse. Acts of aggression toward our trading partners mean that Canadians are starting to avoid US products. The EU is considering an import block on soybeans. That’s fewer places for farmers and ranchers to sell their products. America might not give a good goddamn about science or scientists, but cutting their funds also hits hospitals, which guarantees worse patient care.
Musk should be careful what he is throwing in the wood chipper. If Musk thinks his Tesla sales are bad now, just wait. People can’t afford his shitty EV cars, but they can afford pitchforks.
02/25/25 12:07 PM | Comment Link