Debate: It is in the interests of the world to feed starving nations

[werepossum]

The reason I didn't offer a third rebuttal was because, in reality, all I would have been doing was re-iterating my second rebuttal. And ironically, everyone else is on the same page pretty much. If we feed a nation that cannot support itself, we just end up making the next generation's lives even worse as they are even MORE dependent on foreign resources, which they cannot afford to purchase, and makes the chances more likely that an Extremist group (Watch as I compare Africa to the Third Reich....) will offer "All the right Answers" and then use force of arms to enact this "Right Answer" making life worse again for the rest of the world. If we don't allow these people to realize that their own bad decisions have placed them in this situation, they will blame US for not feeding them if something happens to us and we start struggling to feed ourselves. (I will grant that this is a logical Fallacy, The Slippery Slope Fallacy, as pointed out by my English Teacher, but if you look at history, it is a PROVEN and RECURRING Logical Fallacy. )

Word.

(Damn I'm so hood!)

My ex-father-in-law said something profound to me once, that the old saw about teaching a man to fish is all wrong. If that man's family is hungry and he's worth anything at all, he's going to be fishing anyway. You can teach him to fish better, you can provide him better tools or the knowledge to make them, but if his family is hungry and he's just waiting for his fish to be brought to him, then nothing you do is ever going to change that.

Of course, there has to be water...

 

[Saskwach]

It's interesting that the doctrine of foreign aid that P.T. Bauer [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thomas_Bauer] thoroughly debunked decades ago is still the standard thought in every major western government.

 

[Tatter]

Providing food to a country USED to provide some means of controlling what went on in the country. However, with the rise of the UN and international law, food aid is guaranteed to any country facing a humanitarian crisis, which means they can tell us to go f*ck ourselves whenever we tell them to do something, and keep receiving the food anyhow.

The key to diplomacy, as Teddy Roosevelt once said, is to speak softly and carry a big stick. We have continued speaking softly, but tossed aside the big stick for fear of looking like a bully. The result is that nobody listens to us any more, and it will take not only picking up the big stick, but bashing a number of other countries' skulls with it, before they will listen to us again.

(EDIT: Yes, that means more countries than Iraq and Afghanistan. Lots more.)