If one plans to write a letter to a newspaper or engage in conversation about current events, it would normally be assumed that some time had been taken to actually look up information, using nonpartisan sources to find the truth.
Apparently, many people find their lives way too busy to do much of that, particularly about the U.S. Agency for International Development. After all, it is so much easier to simply accept what the current administration and/or its unelected and unvetted Department of Government Efficiency spits out. Even easier is to watch the current press secretary smirk, while waving around papers purported to be invoices of the crimes of this “criminal organization.”
In various letters or discussions on this subject, there often isn’t even a smidge about the innumerable health care programs USAID has fostered all over the world, the main and highly successful thrust of our foreign aid over the last 60-plus years. The cruelly abrupt ending to those programs is exactly what the protest is all about. Rarely noted is the fact that DOGE has, for the most part, been acting illegally in its treatment of congressionally approved programs and civil service workers, which is what the 50-plus lawsuits are all about.
This is not to say that any of our programs are perfect — they’re not — which is why they need periodic review by qualified inspectors general approved by Congress. It seems, therefore, grossly irresponsible and, frankly, stupid to send an entity such as the Department of Government Efficiency — much akin to a group of giddy adolescent boys each carrying a machete — into a carefully nurtured and precious garden to weed it and then celebrate the egregious damage wrought.
Janis Gaddis
Dover
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
