USAID — A Lynching Is Announced

Rome's noblest son, Cicero, scholar, jurist, statesman, treasurer, magistrate, mayor, consul, legate, proconsul, admired even today by academics, administrators, and even theologians, strongly defended the country's democratic tradition, refused to join Caesar's triumvirate and opposed Mark Antony's power grab, and was waylaid by Antony's hired assassins. They cut off his head and hands, and after the gloating inspection of Antony and his wife Fulvia, placed them on a pike on the forum for passersby to relish.

- (The writer is a US-based international development advisor and had worked with the World Bank. He can be reached at [e-mail])

The world is watching the same execrable display with one of the worthiest and most effective public organizations, the US Agency of International Development. Its shortened name, USAID or more commonly AID, has been the source of its biggest misunderstanding. The naive have just assumed it to be an aid organization, whose job is to hand out American money to poor countries. The dilettanti in the Trump administration have now decided to throttle the agency to save money for US citizens. Nothing could be more self-defeating.

The US Secretary of State presides over the Department of State that administers US foreign policy, its relations with all foreign countries. The architects of the policy were wise enough to realize that relationships are not built by just pacts and treaties, alliances and agreements, even when backed by powerful armed forces—what the hoi polloi see as the strongest way of dealing with other nations. That is why the Secretary of State was shrewdly equipped with two other agencies, USIA and USAID.