Opinion | The richest men in the world accept the poorest children in the world

The richest man in the world boasts with the destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, which saves the life of the poorest children in the world, and said he pushed them “in the wood chopper”.

According to my calculations, Elon Musk probably has net assets greater than that of the poorest billions of people in the world. Since Donald Trump’s choice, Musk’s personal net assets have grown well beyond the entire annual budget of the USA, which is in any case less than 1 percent of the federal budget. It is insensitive to happy billionaires like Musk and President Trump to cut off children from medicine, but as President John F. Kennedy emphasized when he proposed the agency in 1961, it is also myopic.

Kennedy shortened the help, noticed, “would be catastrophic and more expensive in the long run.” He added: “Our own security would be endangered and our prosperity would be endangered.”

Maybe Russia has praised Trump’s step.

In contrast to Kennedy, the Trump administration brings together with cruelty, ignorance and myopia, and this combination seems to be particularly obvious in its attack on American humanitarian aid.

One person has already died of bird flu in the United States, and there have been increasing concerns of a pandemic denominator, Trump’s suspension of foreign help interrupted the monitoring of bird flu in 49 countries, according to the Global Health Council, a non-profit organization in the USA.

Do you remember American panic about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014? (Trump was particularly hysterical at the time.) In the end, an Ebola pandemic was averted – partly because of the work of USAID in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Another Ebola outbreak has just been reported in Uganda, which was previously identified. USAID would usually help suppress it – but now Trump and Musk have put it outside the commission.

Another hemorrhagic fever named Marburg Virus broke out in Tanzania last month. The auxiliary workers hurry to contain the virus, but Trump made the United States Awol and left the world a little more susceptible.

An disclosure: In 2012, USAID played some games for India and Africa based on a book that my wife and I wrote “half sky”. USAID has not paid us anything for it, and the games did a good job to promote deworming, forming girls and a safe pregnancy.

I saw how USAID operates all over the world and it is a mixed picture. It is fair to complain that USAID is endlessly bureaucratic and that too much of the aid is more of the so-called Beltway-Banditen-Banditen-Bandters than to people in need abroad.

However, there is no basis for the mythology of the White House that USAIS is an enclave of Woke Waste, which in Trump’s claim that it spent around $ 100 million for condoms for Hamas (he doubled his earlier claim of $ 50 million ).

Hmm. Male condoms cost the US government 3.3 cents each, so that three billion condoms would be. According to my calculation, every fighter should have sex 325 times a day every day so that every fighter consumes so many condoms in a year.

This could erase Hamas as a fighting force more effectively than the Israeli bombing.

In any case, the actual amount of US support, which has been spent on condoms for Gaza in recent years, does not seem to be 100 million US dollars, but $ 0.

Trump’s policy is as ruthless as his rhetoric. I would welcome the restructuring of USAID, but this is not a restructuring, but the demolition – a blow to our values ​​and interests alike.

Musk Lambasted USAid as a “criminal organization”. In fact, many of their employees have risked their lives in the best tradition of the public service. The USAid Memorial Wall honors 99 people who were killed during work for the agency in places such as Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

I have seen real improvements in USA over the years. The public-private partnership to combat the lead poison announced last year was a model of the American leadership. And so what USAD mean for me is from my travels:

I saw women and girls with obstetric fistula, injured a terrible birth, received a 600 dollar operation that gives them their lives -and that is something that supports the USA.

I saw how men humiliated by elephantiasis and grotesque enlarged scrotums were humiliated and occasionally needed a wheelbarrow to support their organs while walking. And USAID fought this disease and spread it less.

I have seen children who died of malaria (and I had malaria), and in the past two decades I have contributed to making USAD making great progress against the disease.

I saw how southern Africa devastated from AIDS. And then the landmark program was transformed against AIDS by President George W. Bush Pepper and was partially implemented by the USA, the landscape. I saw coffin manufacturers in Lesotho and Malawi grumbling that their business collapsed because far fewer people died. Pfepfar has saved 26 million lives so far. (In the coming months I will see if I can calculate how many life is lost through Trump’s aids.)

I have seen the suffering of communities in which people in middle age routinely become blindly before trachoma, river blindness or cataracts – and the transformation when USAID prevents such blindness.

Trump mocked that USAID was “led by radical lunatics”. Is it radical insane to save the life of the children? Promote literacy for girls? To fight blindness?

If this is woken up, what about the Protestant Christians in the international justice mission, which, with the support of USAID, did excellent work to fight for the sex trade of children in Cambodia and in the Philippines? Does Trump believe that saving children from rape is a radical insane?

Trump’s movements are insecure legality, not least because USAid has been set up by the congress, but the results are undeniable. All over the world, children are already missing health care and food because the attack on the agency that Kennedy founded to maintain our values ​​and protect our interests.

For billionaires in the White House, it may seem like a game. But for everyone with hearts, it is about the life of children and our own security, and what develops is contradictory.