Did Americans elect Trump to shut down humanitarian aid through USAID? Did they elect Trump to create a Middle East Riviera in Gaza? Did they elect Trump because they wanted a trade war? Did they elect Trump because they wanted the nation to expand into Greenland and Panama?
Here is writer and former Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes at The New York Times:
Mr. Trump’s targets do not suggest strength. Picking on Panama and Greenland or threatening trade wars with Canada and Mexico has the feel of a schoolyard bully looking for someone smaller to push around. While these fights may offer immediate political wins, the world does not live and die by the rhythms of American news cycles or the alternative reality of Fox News and OANN. It looks at us from the outside in and sees a president ignoring state sovereignty, which has been the cornerstone of global stability since the World Wars — and doing so at a time when Vladimir Putin is trying to subsume parts of Ukraine, Xi Jinping is committed to asserting control over Taiwan, and some Israeli politicians are pushing for annexation of Gaza and the West Bank, all under the guise of national security. If the United States exempts itself from the rules, why will other nations follow them?
This is one reason Mr. Trump’s suggestion that the United States take ownership of Gaza and turn it into the Middle East’s Riviera was so jarring. Like many things Mr. Trump proposes, it is unlikely to happen (again, hardly a show of strength). But it further legitimizes the idea that two million Palestinians in Gaza should abandon land they do not want to leave and ignores the fact that neighboring Arab states like Egypt and Jordan would be destabilized by complicity in ethnic cleansing. Moreover, it implicitly endorses a view of foreign policy that strips less powerful nations and peoples of any right to determine their own fate. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, seized on this new reality: “Now,” he said after Mr. Trump’s remarks, “we will work to completely bury the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state.”
If Mr. Trump were concerned about the plight of Gazans, he would not be destroying the U.S. agency responsible for helping them rebuild. Already, the global freeze on foreign assistance and suspension of much of U.S.A.I.D.’s work force renders the agency incapable of supporting the tenuous cease-fire in Gaza with humanitarian assistance, never mind the more arduous tasks of clearing rubble, diffusing unexploded bombs and providing shelter to hundreds of thousands of civilians who have lost their homes.
Unlike Mr. Trump’s pronouncements on Gaza and Greenland, the Elon Musk-supervised shuttering of U.S.A.I.D. is something that is already happening, with tangible consequences not only for the people around the world who depend on the agency but also for Americans who expect their government to prevent the spread of terrorism, disease and the global influence of the Chinese Communist Party. Stripped of U.S.A.I.D. funding, struggling under the weight of tariffs, nations including U.S. allies may now look to China as a more predictable source of trade and investment. This dynamic reflects the ways in which power in this country ripples out beyond our borders. When the richest man in the world can so easily undermine our place on the global stage, it is, quite simply, a harbinger of decline: a sign of a corrupted superpower so brittle that its sources of influence can be taken apart from within.
“The people who are opposed to aid should realize that this is a very powerful source of strength for us,” President Kennedy told those U.S.A.I.D. personnel in 1962. “As we do not want to send American troops to a great many areas where freedom may be under attack, we send you.” In those days, America was a newly minted superpower, its rising status manifested in the youth of its president and his vision of a “new frontier.” That mind-set led to its own hubris and excess, but it offered people around the world an extended hand. That was something in which Americans could take pride.
Read the entire piece here.
Actually, John, I am afraid that the answer to your rhetorical question is “yes.” Hope I am wrong. But if it *is* yes, it might not wholly be because our friends and neighbors celebrate the darkest possibilities of human selfishness and fear. At least in part the path we have chosen–and let me say this about fellow Christians–is the fruit of grave deception…about morality, theology, and political policy. The steps along this path have gradually led us to understand the kingdom of God in shallow, worldly terms, and blinded us to the sense in which wisdom and humility are necessary to governing well, and to the fact that governing perfectly is impossible in this or any nation. People in power have an interest in having us deceived in these ways. God have mercy on us, and on those harmed by the bed we’ve made to lie in.
Nothing that this Rhodes thinks and writes makes America stronger or morally better. He and B. O. and as we saw for four years JB did nothing but give away billions and billions of Tax Payer money and America benefitted nothing in foreign. Policy, other than the UN and WHO and the rest of the globalist structure, saying Give more.
When it comes to Peace, BO and JB gave Iran all the room and Money to create Terrorism everywhere, especially against Israel.
Baloney, to Rhodes and BO and JB’s type of Governing and policies.
USAID, was so bloated and a slush fund for leftist, it needed torn down and the Aid for medical and food to other nations can be given and save billions.
Trump is doing exactly what he got my vote to do. Fix N.C. first, like he is doing more in 3 weeks than JB did in the whole time since the destruction, is just one example.
Disagree with the speed of tearing down, waste or what he is tearing down, but I will take his policies a thousand times more than BO or JB.