So, sending medical supplies is bad because we’re treating them like lab rats apparently? The food is bad because we’re ruining their economy? Yeah, it’s us sending them food that’s doing it. Couldn’t have ANYTHING to do with 50 years of ethnic strife and idiots taking back productive farm land from ‘white oppressors’ to hand it over to people who don’t know how to farm!

Oh, and the part about ‘having our favorites’ is just priceless. How naive can one person be? You actually don’t expect a nation to differentiate between what they send their allies and what they send their enemies?

My point about the Soviets wasn’t that you left them out, it’s that you’re completely ignoring their influence. The United States didn’t operate in a vacuum. If the Reds toss a few million Kalashnikovs at rebel army A to try to overthrow a democratically elected government, we’re likely to send that government military aid. It’s the difference in motive that matters. They were actively trying to destabilize those places, we were trying to restore order and clean up their mess.

But that’s fine man. But I elect you to go to Africa and explain to all those people that are going to die of plague and famine when we stop sending food and medical supplies – I’m sure you ‘ll have no trouble explaining to them how they’re really ‘better off’ without our pesky interference.

Listen, food aid from the US does NOT cost us a penny more. If anything the US is the only nation in the world that sells its food aid today, and so this too in ironic addition to the flourishing of arms trade has been in place since the Cold war when we started soliciting the loyalty of emerging democratic states, and “surprise, surprise” it was also then too that the IMF was created to handpick specifically those nations that would start receiving out OUR favor. How do you figure?? Because asides from wanting to play peacekeeping hero of the day (Mogadishu doesn’t gracefully close this chapter…) you CAN’T say we never not had our favorites much less were not directly been implicated in arms dealing, and that my friend, is just as much a crime as producing the weapons themselves.

Think Rwanda back to 94 for instance. You’d think after the Somali debacle a year before Rwanda wouldn’t have been in any our horizons, but Boutros Ghali HIMSELF was the man who’d helped seal some five million arms deal btw Egypt and South Africa so the Hutu front would stay in the league of their genocidal act (Boutros was good friends with French president Francois miterrand, and basically Mitterand was good friends with Hutu leader Habyrimana). So all that said now, I am the one struggling to see how my omission of the Soviets into this damages my take on the US duplicitous class act. The Soviets were simply besides the point, and even so, I’m still unclear how any omission of them translates as evidence to the contrary.

And hon, please if you were to take anything away from this, and simply b/c I just can’t wrap my mind over the pretentiousness of some people who like to talk straight out of their asses despite or indeed because of the little they know, let me just say this: today the billions of dollars we send in food aid are called export dumping. If we truly cared for these nations we’d find any means possible to diminish the most blatant and disastrous effects of our international export subsidy policies on them. And basically, that means recognizing these people have incompatible diets with the distilled animal feed we send to them (it’s not actual food, everyone), we’d once and for all absorb the fact they don’t have the right infrastructure for the food to even get there, and FINALLY we’d just admit THERE IS NO SENSE IN CRASHING OUR LOADS OF GMOS onto their soils if it only means to disrupt the livelihoods of millions and making their markets only more volatile than before.

And why is all this necessary, you may ask? I don’t know, maybe because it proves we don’t wear our Samaritan robe as well as you choose to think. So no, actually, buddy, YOU couldn’t be more wrong.

You’re definitely spot-on, however, in fingering the Dirty Friggin’ Reds as the main culprits for enabling Africa’s turmoil.

I’m not an expert on the matter, and anyone who is I’d invite to come prove me wrong, but it seems that much like in the rest of the world, our consumption via corporations and sub-contractors fronts the capital, the black market from Russia and Eastern Europe (and now, China) fronts the arms, and ethnic hatred does the rest. Either way, I doubt Obama or McCain are going to make that much of a difference.

Actually buddy, you couldn’t really be more wrong. You could try – but I just don’t see how you could accomplish it. Have you taken a look at an African army(I use the term VERY loosely) lately? Does that equipment they’re packing look U.S. issued to you? I love how you place all the blame on the U.N. post Cold War too – God forbid we blame the Soviets who filled the entire planet with AK-47’s. By the way, in case you were wondering, it’s estimated that AK-47’s have killed more people than any other weapon in the history of man.

Wanna take a guess how many of those we’ve made in this country? Is your answer none? God I hope so, but considering the intelligence of your post, I’ll try not to hold my breath.

The US never had a whole lot of interest in Africa – little strategic value, few natural resources, constantly shifting governments (just what exactly is Congo known as these days?). The Russians saw it and South America as untapped markets for exporting communism and flooded weapons in to any warlord that claimed they would support them if they came to power. Now that they’re out of the game the Chinese have picked up the torch and are running with it brilliantly.

We’ve tried to come in and restore order a few different times, and it’s always ended badly. These people have ethnic hatreds that make the Middle East look like hippie commune. I just fail to see how it’s our fault exactly. We send them billions in food and medical supplies, the Russians and Chinese send weapons, but we’re the bad guys?