The New York Times Thinks That American Taxpayers Are Obligated To Solve The Personal Problems Of Everyone In The World

I often make fun of the liberal mindset that prescribes that all the personal problems of people in our society can and must be solved by government taxing and spending and the creation of more and more “programs” of one sort and another. As I write on my “About” page:

The central tenet of [the Manhattan] orthodoxy is that all personal problems of the people in society can be solved by government taxing and spending.  The obvious corollary is that since all problems can be solved by taxing and spending, therefore they must be solved by taxing and spending, and anyone who stands in the way of those solutions is immoral.

The fundamental difficulty here, as Margaret Thatcher famously quipped, is that pretty soon you “run out of other people’s money.” And that’s when you are only trying to create perfect fairness and justice within your own country. More recently the progressive orthodoxy has morphed to a point where the American taxpayers are now seen as obligated to solve the personal problems of everyone in the world.

Do you think I am exaggerating? Consider if you will the most extreme of possible examples: Afghanistan. Are the American taxpayers obliged to solve the personal problems of the people in that god-forsaken country? If you are wondering, check out this piece from the New York Times on February 4, headline, “In Afghanistan, a Trail of Hunger and Death Behind U.S. Aid Cuts.”

Afghanistan — Isn’t that the country that fought violently and relentlessly for two decades to drive the U.S. out, finally succeeding when the U.S. withdrew in August 2021? We tried to bring 21st century civilization to this violent, tribal society, and they manifestly hated us and wanted nothing to do with us. They killed thousands of our soldiers. Now that we have left, it seems that they find themselves without enough to eat. Could that possibly be our problem? That is the gist of this article. In fact it’s even worse than that, because the article tries to spin the facts to make the reader feel guilty for the alleged suffering of these people. A few excerpts:

The U.S. aid cuts in Afghanistan were as sudden as they were brutal. Even after the U.S. withdrawal and the end of the war in 2021, the United States continued pouring money into Afghanistan. From the 2021 Taliban takeover until last year, Washington had provided nearly $1 billion annually — over a third of all aid flowing into one of the world’s poorest countries.

Did you know that after the disastrous 2021 withdrawal the Biden administration went right ahead and continued to throw a billion a year of American taxpayer money at these people who hate us? And then the bad, bad Trump people imposed the “brutal” cuts.

The [U.S. Agency for International Development’s] programs once helped clear landscapes scarred by war and mines, diversify crops and keep millions from hunger. Four million children are now at risk of dying from malnutrition, according to the World Food Program, the most in a quarter-century.

And it’s not just food but health centers:

Nearly 450 health centers closed because of the cuts, including a tiny white building in the drought-stricken village of Nalej, where Malika Ghullami safely gave birth to two children in past years and was pregnant again with twins last year.

Does it occur to you that the Afghans might have enough to eat if they devoted some effort to growing food instead of opium poppies? Exact figures are not available, but supplying opium to the international drug market is estimated to constitute up to half of the Afghan economy. Somehow this New York Times article never mentions that.

For some more honest information on the Afghan drug-dominated economy, here is a piece from February last year from something called the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. The gist is that after a half-hearted attempt in 2022 by the Taliban-dominated government to ban the growing of opium poppies, the market has returned to “normal,” with Afghanistan by far the dominant supplier of opium in the world markets. The Global Initiative calls the supposed ban of poppy growing “smoke and mirrors.”

Fieldwork in Afghanistan in 2024 found that the sale of opium continued unabated and had even become more ubiquitous. . . . Contrary to initial predictions, the opium ban has not put an end to the illicit drug trade in Afghanistan. The powerful traffickers who were the main source of funding for the Taliban during the insurgency continued to operate freely. . . . Despite the Taliban’s show of strength, the resurgence of cultivation and the continued trade in illicit drugs are testament to the deep roots and resilience of Afghanistan’s illicit drug economy.  

So how about Afghanistan taking some of the multi-billions from the international drug trade and devoting that to buying food or operating health clinics? I’m sorry, but that would be expecting these supposedly “fiercely independent” people to actually take some responsibility for their own lives and their own society. If you think they should, then you are not aware of the fundamental principle that it is the American taxpayer, and only the American taxpayer, who must solve all of their problems.