Byron pens a caution that my criticism that the aid given to Haiti in the last two decades, totaling several billion dollars, has been largely for naught, is unfair. He points out that in fact much good has been accomplished:
I'm not sure "money thrown" at the problems in Haiti was really just "thrown" nor utterly wasted. Sure some programs and schemes were less effective, but not every aid program was pointless. Schools taught some kids, some clean wells were built, some vaccinations given, some roads built, some hospitals equipped. Those doing development work still have a lot to learn, and local folks do too. But it isn't as if we didn't save some kids from starvation, help some people in good ways, and make a bit of a difference. Tearing off the darkness doesn't come easily, but some successes have been seen, even in Haiti. Brooks is right to insist on cultural ideals that are wise, and to point out the bad infra-structure isn't anything new, really. He's right, but it isn't anything that "liberals" would disagree with. Did you mean to imply as much?
He's right, of course, that much good has been done in Haiti and that that miserable land would be in far worse shape than it is had Americans and others not helped, but we must distinguish aid, which is a government to government transfer, from the work of charities, mission organizations, disaster relief, etc. Most of the good that Byron talks about has been accomplished by private, non-government organizations (NGOs), not through aid which often winds up in the pockets of corrupt politicians, the military, and other thugs. Some of it might seep through the layers of corruption to the people, but it's hardly a good return on our money.
Byron goes on to say that:
I know a number of NGO workers, policy wonks and missionaries. Some are evangelicals, some are active more mainline congregations or traditions. I just don't know anybody who has that simplistic ideology that we can't critique any third world group or indigenous practices. Making liberal ideas about multi-culturalism a whipping boy is too easy and, while may having a grain of truth, I think you overstated it.
This is doubtless true. The people who actually work in other cultures are much less likely to suffer the illusion that all cultures deserve respect or that it's chauvinistic to think one culture superior to another. It is to illustrate this that I appended the letter from my missionary friend to the post. The "multicultural blather" doesn't come from people most familiar with the culture in which they labor to bring relief from misery, it comes from the academy, the media, and the political sphere and seeps down into our popular discourse and determines our assumptions about the world.
We fail to do what needs to be done to bring about genuine change in these places because we're cowed into thinking we'll be called racists, imperialists, paternalists, and colonialists by those who insist that we have no right to impose our cultural values on others - that our culture is no better than theirs. So instead we just send aid which is essentially welfare for corruptocrats, and saints like my friend and Byron's acquaintances stick their fingers in the dike heroically making their life's work trying to hold back the tide.
The rest of By's email can be read on the Feedback page.
Those who want to read up on the problems of giving aid to poor countries should read Dambisia Moya's Dead Aid, or Paul Collier's Bottom Billion.
RLC
