Muslim Brotherhood

[Jones_RE]

Perhaps putting the aid money through a third party would be the best idea: the neutral criteria provide political cover to deal with regimes who are unpopular with certain factions in Congress, for example.

However, I think we need to ditch the term "human rights" as a qualifier in our international relations. Why? Because it's ambiguous. Which rights? And what policies, lack of policies or courses of action or inaction lead to being a promoter or abuser of same?

The US is roundly blasted by the human rights crowd for its judicial system - despite having some of the more elaborate criminal law protections and better trained (and less corrupt) police forces around. You can never do enough to please folks on this score, in my opinion. The Europeans treat their immigrants like crap - the otherwise excellent German school system routes ethnic Turks into institutions so bad half the graduates are functionally illiterate and therefore can't work even the simplest of modern jobs.

Instead, I think we should set out a few concrete principles:

1) Failure to act is not sufficient grounds to deny aid. After all, if a country has the resources to put up a functioning education, health and criminal justice system then it doesn't need foreign assistance! I could say the same thing about drug production and domestically located terrorist groups - countries with the ability to control these matters are probably with it enough to get by without help.

2) Official corruption is not sufficient grounds to deny aid. Let's face it - graft is a universal human vice. We find it in the frickin' US House of Representatives, so maybe we ought to be willing to overlook it in a country without running water.

3) Lack of representative government is not sufficient grounds to deny aid. The fully democratic governments, by and large, can take care of themselves.

But what criteria should stop us from sending over aid dollars, food, medicine or supplies? What justifies permitting human death and suffering on a national scale?

(I'll throw out the easy one right away: because of the action or inaction of a nation's government, the aid is not being received by those who need it. In this case, the human suffering involved doesn't increase by the drop in aid, because international aid wasn't getting to those who need it in the first place.)

[Bill Moore]

Well said Tom, and I will buy you a case of beer if you can sell that idea to that Congress. Every idea that emerges alive from that place comes complete with parasitic riders, which means there will always be compliance requirement. Maybe the up and coming generation of new leaders will have a different outlook on how the world works.