U.S. “Stingiest” of Major Nations on Foreign Aid (But Not Really)
 

     A pre-Christmas editorial, “America the Indifferent,” does some major-league misleading on U.S. foreign aid in order to paint the Bush administration as stingy: “It was with great fanfare that the United States and 188 other countries signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a manifesto to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and disease among the one billion people in the world who subsist on barely anything. The project set a deadline of 2015 to achieve its goals. Chief among them was the goal for developed countries, like America, Britain and France, to work toward giving 0.7 percent of their national incomes for development aid for poor countries. Almost a third of the way into the program, the latest available figures show that the percentage of United States income going to poor countries remains near rock bottom: 0.14 percent. Britain is at 0.34 percent, and France at 0.41 percent. (Norway and Sweden, to no one's surprise, are already exceeding the goal, at 0.92 percent and 0.79 percent.).”

     That of course, ignores the fact the U.S. gives more in actual dollars (as opposed to percentage of income) in foreign aid than any other country. The Times implicitly admits that’s true, without deigning to give its readership the actual numbers: “Something's not right here. The United States is the world's richest nation. Washington is quick to say that it contributes more money to foreign aid than any other country. But no one is impressed when a billionaire writes a $50 check for a needy family. The test is the percentage of national income we give to the poor, and on that basis this country is the stingiest in the Group of Seven industrialized nations.”

     Setting aside the Times’ predictable (and simplistically argued) push for wealth redistribution, the U.S. is hardly stingy on the aid front. As the Council on Foreign Relations notes: “In 2001, the United States gave $10.9 billion, Japan $9.7 billion, Germany $4.9 billion, the United Kingdom $4.7 billion, and France $4.3 billion.”

     By making a moral test out of the amount of giving as a percentage of national income, the Times glosses over the fact that in actual dollars (surely the most important measurement to the recipients), the U.S. is the world’s premier donor of foreign aid -- a figure that doesn’t include private charitable work by American-based groups. The Times also ignores that America’s status as the “world’s richest nation” may have something to do with the ideals of limited government -- including spending wisely and frugally abroad.

For the full editorial on the stingy U.S., click here:

Passing Along A Dubious Iraqi Death Toll
 

     The Sunday Magazine’s end-of-year section on people who passed on in 2004 includes contributing writer Elizabeth Rubin’s essay on Margaret Hassan, the long-time aide worker killed by terrorists in Iraq, a country Hassan spent much of her life trying to help. But near the end of her piece, Rubin turns from the tribute to criticize U.S. policy in a tendentious manner: “So how are the children? How is Iraq? Infant mortality rates have doubled since before the war. Acute malnutrition among children under 5 has nearly doubled. That's about 400,000 damaged children. One estimate says 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion.”

     (For more on the dubious likely source of Rubin’s incredibly high “100,000” figure, click here:)

     Rubin continues: “That is presumably what [Hassan] would want us to remember. And yet it's the weapon of terror, the video of a pleading Western hostage, that we remember, because the victim resembles us. The sense of violation is that much more searing when someone as private and selfless as Margaret Hassan is immortalized at the most denigrating moment of her life. We know these killings are savage and immoral. In a way, they help us to believe that we still have the moral high ground in Iraq. But do we?”

For the rest of Rubin’s essay on the murder of Margaret Hassan, click here:

Iraqi Elections Imperiled, Again
 

     Reporter Robert Worth contributes a bleak summary of the week that was in Iraq for the Sunday Week in Review. Like other Times’ reporters, Worth revisits how the carnage will “darken the prospects” of Iraq’s upcoming elections: “Images of carnage in Iraq have become wearily familiar, but the past week's bloodshed, which included a bomb attack on Tuesday inside the mess tent at a military base in Mosul that left 18 Americans dead, was of a different order. The attacks appeared to darken the prospects for the country's first free elections, set for January, and cast doubt on the military's ability to protect its own bases.”

     The Times again trumpets a favored poll finding: “For months, polls have shown that majorities or near majorities of Americans believe the war in Iraq was a mistake, or not worth the cost in lives, money and prestige. Some analysts of the American political scene have said that if the insurgency continued to worsen, or if the country fell into civil war, public opinion could swing decisively against the administration's Iraq policy, which might imperil Mr. Bush's ambitious domestic plans.”

For the rest of Worth’s summary, click here:

Iraqi Posing “Nasty Array of Problems” For Bush
 

     More wishful anti-Bush thinking?

     After last week’s deadly suicide attack on U.S. troops at a mess hall in Iraq, White House reporter Richard Stevenson filed a think piece, “Bush's New Problem: Iraq Could Eclipse Big Domestic Agenda.”

     Stevenson wrote last Wednesday: “The deadly attack on a United States military base in northern Iraq on Tuesday scrambled the Bush administration's hopes of showing progress toward stability there, while making clear that the war is creating a nasty array of problems for President Bush as he gears up for an ambitious second term. Despite weathering criticism of his Iraq policy during the presidential campaign, Mr. Bush is heading into his next four years in the White House facing a public that appears increasingly worried about the course of events in Iraq and wondering where the exit is. And as he prepares to take the oath of office a second time and to focus more of his energy on a far-reaching domestic agenda, he is at risk of finding his presidency so consumed by Iraq for at least the next year that he could have trouble pressing ahead with big initiatives like the overhauling of Social Security.”

     Stevenson shaped hypothetical questions to put Bush and his military planners in the worst possible light: “At the same time, Mr. Bush faces fundamental questions about his strategy for bringing stability to Iraq. How can the United States -- with the help of Iraqi security forces whose performance has been uneven at best -- assure the safety of Iraqis who go to the polls on Jan. 30 when it cannot keep its own troops safe on their own base? And are Mr. Bush and his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, more vulnerable to criticism that they have failed to provide American forces with everything they need to take on a shadowy, fast-evolving enemy that, as the Tuesday attack showed, continues to display a notable degree of resilience?”

     Stevenson took care to note the possible impact of the suicide assault on the Iraqi elections, and Bush’s domestic agenda: “As a result, the degree to which the elections come off smoothly or not, and whether they move Iraq toward stability or even greater chaos, could well put an early stamp on Mr. Bush's new term. And the elections and whatever violence surrounds them could compete with or overshadow his calls for action on changing Social Security, rewriting the tax code, revising the immigration laws and stiffening educational standards, among other domestic plans the White House intends to begin rolling out in January. Supporters of Mr. Bush dismissed the idea that his Iraq policy was proving wrongheaded or that the difficulties in Iraq would torpedo the rest of the president's agenda by sapping his political support.”

     Later, Stevenson made sure to remind his readership: “But polls have shown for months that majorities or near-majorities of Americans think that invading Iraq was a mistake or not worth the cost in lives, money and prestige abroad.”

For Stevenson’s full article, click here: