California Conservative

NY times reports: “The world’s wealthiest nations formally agreed Saturday to cancel at least $40 billion of debt owed to international agencies by the world’s poorest lands, most of them in Africa.”

“The agreement came after months of negotiations in which the United States had been pressing the other Group of 8 countries - Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia - to agree that the solution to poor countries’ indebtedness was to cancel their debt burden completely rather than seek simply to ease it by taking over interest repayments.

The United States agreed to pay up to $1.75 billion in compensation to international lenders over the next 10 years, while Britain agreed to pay up to $960 million. Other Group of 8 countries made their own, undisclosed pledges; more pledges are expected from other members of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund this year.”

TimesWatch.org notes: “Losing Interest in Africa When Bush Helps — [G]ive the Times a story on America’s leading role in forgiveness of African debt and it’s relegated to page 12.”

While it’s noble to be generous, America is very familiar with the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

If someone asked us, we might argue that U.S. taxpayer’s money could be better spent in America for America. But that would be cruel and heartless.

UPDATE:

AP reports: “Bush Vows to Speed Up Aid to Poor Nations”

Echoing previous sentiment, why should the ever-maligned U.S. and our President be compelled to “vow” anything to anyone that doesn’t serve our immediate national interest? Since so many nations have been outspoken and critical of America, why don’t they “speed up aid to poor nations” and leave us out of it?

“President Bush said Monday the United States would speed up delivery of funding to poor countries after African leaders complained that one of his signature aid projects was rife with red tape.

In March 2002, Bush said he would begin distributing foreign aid with the Millennium Challenge Account. Countries would be eligible for the proposed $5 billion in aid only if they were committed to democratic, economic and human rights reforms.”

American government should know by now: We can’t buy the trust and respect of other countries. Since our prosperity is envied, they’ll always carry some resentment. Ungrateful.

50 years following the The Marshall Plan, we have our perfect example.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 13th, 2005 at 11:29 am and is filed under Economy, Foreign Policy, Special Interests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.