[Colin Glassey 3 PM] Aid workers
Another famine is coming to Ethiopia and appeals by various aid organizations are making it onto the news programs. I've very troubled by this based, in part, on the new book Emma's War: Love, Betrayal, and Death in the Sudan by
Deborah Scroggins. I haven't read the book yet but I've read several reviews (this is one from the Washington Post). Its a complex story but the bottom line is: the men with guns are using the suffering of the poor for their own ends. To a large extent, the hunger, the orphans, the misery, is created by the local leaders.
Aid workers are actually part of the problem. By giving out food, they allow the gunmen to spend their spare money on ammunition and RPGs. By working with the local authorities to set up camps they continue the power of corupt, often evil leaders. Guess who ran the refugee camps in the Eastern Congo after the genocidal Hutus were forced out of Rwanda? Those same genocidal monsters were in charge of the refugee camps.
Should we do nothing? Is the right moral stance to let thousands or hundreds of thousands of people starve as a way of convincing the gunmen that they need to worry more about feeding the people in their region than buying weapons? By sending food aid are we encouraging the very behavior which the aid is trying to prevent? It is well known that by paying kidnappers you encourage more kidnappings. Is the same lesson applicable to starving people in Africa?
Getting back to Ethiopia, the government there spent hundreds of millions of dollars beefing up their military so they could avenge their loss to Eritria. It worked, they beat Eritria two years ago in a replay of the first war. And for what? 50 miles of disputed territory? And now they don't have the money to buy food for a population which has been unable to feed itself, thanks to stupid government policies. And we, the rich countries of the world, are supposed to help the poor of Ethiopia? Maybe first the government of Ethiopia can sell some of its fighter jets? Maybe the government of Ethiopia can devote more of its taxes to agraculture and less for tank battalions?
3:04:16 PM 
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