Why "Humanitarian Aid" is a Myth (Or: the Definition of the Word Fungible)
We've gotten a couple of emails to the effect that accusing the Bush administration of lying about its commitments to Israel is unfair. Several readers have picked up on the fact that the State Department humanitarian aid that we mocked yesterday is going to the "Palestinian people" and not to Hamas. Or, more precisely, Bush only promised on 1/27 to cut off the terrorist Palestinian "government" and not the people that overwhelmingly elected and continue to support that government.
We hate to mince words, but this argument is mind-bogglingly stupid. It's stupid firstly because it ignores the purpose of providing aid and the consequences of continuing to provide it. Increasing aid to a population right after they elect a warmongering government doesn't exactly signal one's displeasure with their choices, nor does it have a chance of dissuading them from making the same choices in the future. Even if it did either of those things (which it doesn't), the entire point of democracy is that the elected government is the result of popular will - it makes no sense to punish the government but not the people who - in a very real sense - are that government. Certainly the populations of 1940s Germany, Italy, and Japan weren't extended such generosity, and none of those countries were democracies.
But we need not entertain debates about mass psychology or military ethics to understand why the State Department's distinction between "aid ot Hamas" and "aid to the Palestinian people" is just a thinly-veiled excuse to avoid having to punish terrorists. All we have to do is read a Dilbert cartoon:
The analogy isn't perfect, but the point is the same. Money is fungible - not having to use it for one thing frees it up for other things. When the United States builds a hospital, that's a hospital's-worth of money that Hamas will use for suicide belts. When the United States provides a crate of food, that's a crate of food's-worth of money that Hamas will use for anti-Semitic incitement. When the United States purchases an ambulance, that's an ambulance's-worth of money that Hamas will use for infiltrating Israeli defenses (not to mention a shiny new ambulance that their terrorists will use to move weapons). Somebody should teach Secretary Rice what 'fungible' means.
We hate to mince words, but this argument is mind-bogglingly stupid. It's stupid firstly because it ignores the purpose of providing aid and the consequences of continuing to provide it. Increasing aid to a population right after they elect a warmongering government doesn't exactly signal one's displeasure with their choices, nor does it have a chance of dissuading them from making the same choices in the future. Even if it did either of those things (which it doesn't), the entire point of democracy is that the elected government is the result of popular will - it makes no sense to punish the government but not the people who - in a very real sense - are that government. Certainly the populations of 1940s Germany, Italy, and Japan weren't extended such generosity, and none of those countries were democracies.
But we need not entertain debates about mass psychology or military ethics to understand why the State Department's distinction between "aid ot Hamas" and "aid to the Palestinian people" is just a thinly-veiled excuse to avoid having to punish terrorists. All we have to do is read a Dilbert cartoon:
The analogy isn't perfect, but the point is the same. Money is fungible - not having to use it for one thing frees it up for other things. When the United States builds a hospital, that's a hospital's-worth of money that Hamas will use for suicide belts. When the United States provides a crate of food, that's a crate of food's-worth of money that Hamas will use for anti-Semitic incitement. When the United States purchases an ambulance, that's an ambulance's-worth of money that Hamas will use for infiltrating Israeli defenses (not to mention a shiny new ambulance that their terrorists will use to move weapons). Somebody should teach Secretary Rice what 'fungible' means.
