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From: Pucc-H:aeq@CS-Mordred.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: RE: Anti-American Fulminations
Message-ID: <465@pucc-h>
Date: Thu, 19-Jan-84 03:38:25 EST
Article-I.D.: pucc-h.465
Posted: Thu Jan 19 03:38:25 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Jan-84 01:39:06 EST
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Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
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        The amount of financial aid and other assistance given to
        foreign governments and plighted peoples everywhere is evidence of
        the American generosity and concern.

Oh?  If America were truly generous to plighted peoples, there would have
been no Payment-In-Kind program; instead the government would have bought the
surplus grain and sent it abroad to feed hungry people.  That way the American
farmers would still have gotten their money, and millions of other people
would also have benefited.  If the government is going to spend tax dollars
anyway, they might at least do some actual good with the money.

I suspect that most members of the current administration have never read
Isaac Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy" (well, tetralogy now).  In the section of
"Foundation" entitled "The Merchant Princes", a major character says this:

                "....  To seize control of a world, they [the Galactic Empire]
        bribe with immense ships that can make war, but lack all economic
        significance.  We, on the other hand, bribe with little things,
        useless in war, but vital to prosperity and profits.
                "A [ruler] will take the ships and even make war.  Arbitrary
        rulers throughout history have bartered their subjects' welfare for
        what they considered honor, and glory, and conquest.  But it's still
        the little things that count -- and [the ruler of the kingdom which
        the Foundation is fighting] won't stand up against the economic
        depression which will sweep all [the opposing kingdom] in two or
        three years."

The point:  The Soviet Union tries to expand its empire by sending arms to
a country.  (I recently saw a cartoon of a starved woman holding out a plate
on which is a gun labeled "Made in USSR"; the caption is, "We asked for
bread.")  The United States, especially under "conservative" administrations,
seems to favor the same tactics.  Perhaps we might win more friends if we
gave countries what they really needed.

-- Jeff Sargent/...pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq