Food Diplomacy Works – LA Times

The heat wave is causing me to loose my focus. I read something interesting, get fired up and ready to blog, and then have to go sit down and cool down. But I’m indoors now, with AC, and ready to catch up. So…

It’s dangerous to live in America, and it’s dangerous to be an American traveling abroad to most places in the world. Why? Because Americans are practically universally hated. Hated because of the mistakes President George Bush has made, hated because we call football soccer or hated because someone couldn’t get a visa into the country. Good or bad, fair or not fair, there are a plenty of reasons to hate (or be jealous of) Americans. But this hate has serious implications, especially when it comes to real or implied threats of terrorism. That’s why yesterday’s LA Times featured an opinion piece about how the United States can gain back some respect from its global friends.

The tragic global hunger crisis, which has swelled the ranks of the world’s most miserable, provides the U.S. with a golden opportunity to do good while rebuilding its shattered global leadership credentials. We should seize the chance to win friends and confound our enemies by showing the world that the United States is the sole superpower when it comes to generosity.

The author states that President George Bush has done a great job in donating humanitarian aid in various projects around the world, but for various reasons all of the goodwill that the United States contributes is unknown or not rightly attributed to the US. In Gaza and the West Bank alone, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) spent USD $50 million in 2007 on goodwill projects. But, as the article explains, many Palestinians didn’t know what USAID was or that American’s were funding the various projects in their communities.

Read the whole piece here.