Etzioni on do-gooder Westerners

The thesis is that we send our wonderful folks over to some backwoods nation, we give 'em a few bucks, democratize them, and everyone reaps the benefits.

Not.

Of some value for the keep-the-money rez?

Even in countries with far more stability and infrastructure than Iraq and Afghanistan, development aid has often fallen painfully short of its goals. More than half of World Bank investment recipients from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s had the same or worsening rates of per capita income as before they received aid. Corruption and mismanagement of funds run rampant on both sides of reconstruction efforts. By attempting multiple projects simultaneously, each far too ambitious in its own right, on ever-tightening aid budgets, the West often causes more problems than it solves. More...