U.S. aiding violence abroad

In the nearly apocalyptic Cold War, the devastating toll on humanity was accompanied by a less… In the nearly apocalyptic Cold War, the devastating toll on humanity was accompanied by a less obvious form of warfare — propaganda.

While the Soviets condemned the United States for its repression of the civil rights movement, the United States criticized the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union.

Both countries, though, engaged in their own widespread human rights violations and found it more convenient to castigate their enemies than to address their own crimes — a relevant point in times when the Bush Administration, perhaps to a greater extent than any prior presidency, is shocking and awing the public with horrific tales from its carefully selected demons list of countries while financing other nations’ violence.

Enter U.S. foreign aid, which is administered with such horrific intentions that it should scare you more than finding R. Kelly hanging around outside your daughter’s middle school.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank, of the approximately $11 billion that the United States spends annually on foreign aid, Israel receives around $2.1 billion in military aid and $600 million more in economic support, not including the three year, $9 billion loan package it enjoys now.

Putting aside the question of why the United States is subsidizing one of the world’s richest economies, it is curious to note that such do the hearts of U.S. policy planners bleed for the plight of humanity that a country the United States’ own State Department notes in its 2003 report “continued to commit numerous, serious human rights abuses,” also receives more foreign aid than any other nation.

The radicals at the State Department also make note of complaints “regarding torture, insufficient living space and inadequate medical care” in Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners — 650 of whom, in a Guantanamo-esque move, have not been “charged or tried” — and casually note that “the international community does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over any part of the occupied territories.” By “international community,” we are to include nearly everyone except the United States, which has spent decades undermining, vetoing and ignoring the efforts of the “international community” to end the occupation, while at the same time funding its brutal continuation.

Another large recipient of U.S. foreign aid is Colombia, currently in the midst of a civil war pitting guerrilla groups against the government and its associated paramilitary forces.

The government, on the receiving end of a $1.3 billion U.S. initiative known as Plan Colombia, is, not surprisingly, the primary purveyor of violence.

Human Rights Watch documents that the Colombian military — itself guilty of “direct involvement” in “arbitrary arrests, torture, ‘disappearances’ and killings” according to Amnesty International — has ties to the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known as the AUC) paramilitaries, a group included on the State Department’s terrorist list that, according to the Council, is “responsible for at least 75 percent of [the 3,500 annual] civilian deaths” and “killing trade union members and human rights activists.”

Anyone with an understanding of basic morality recognizes that we are responsible for our own actions, and that instead of engaging in a propaganda battle, we should stop contributing to the violence we claim to abhor.

In this light, it is so troubling that in this twisted version of fraternity logic, the United States is paying to have friends — friends that are doing a great deal to thwart any hope of world peace.

If the United States actually has an interest in reducing violence — which, given its longstanding and bipartisan preference to maintain “stability” for the benefit of economic interests, seems about as likely as the Eagles winning an NFC championship game — a simple proposition is in order: stop participating in it.

Kevin doesn’t expect to be called an “anti-Colombianite” for this column. Prove him right by not e-mailing him at kbf1@pitt.edu.