You're not very bright, heh? That's OK. Your thread, much like your thought process, is lack luster.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Actually I'm very bright. You obviously have no understanding of history, security or how and why America won the Cold War. I'm sure you will parrot the right wing myth that Ronbo Reagan rode in on a white horse rattling a saber and scared the Russians into submission.
The truth is America greatly outproduced the Soviets in food and agriculture, and we used it as an economic tool that the USSR could never match. We were able to win the hearts and minds, not through aggression, but through nutrition. And we won the war without firing a shot.
"Food is strength, and food is peace, and food is freedom, and food is a helping to people around the world whose good will and friendship we want."
President John F, Kennedy
There will be some who will question why the United States should worry about hunger abroad when it has problems of its own at home. With the ongoing financial crisis, it's easy to ignore the desperate needs of those in far away lands.
After World War II, the "Greatest Generation" did not take that approach and helped Europe and Asia fight hunger. Secretary of State George Marshall, realizing that hunger and chaos abroad threatened America's security, stated, "We can act for our own good by acting for the world's good."
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed what was then known as the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, or Public Law 480. In 1961, the law got another name when President Kennedy expanded the program and renamed it "Food for Peace."
Fighting hunger was a part of the Eisenhower administration strategy right from the get-go. Just months into office, riots broke out against Soviet and Communist domination in East Germany. Where there is chaos, you are certain to find food shortages and this was certainly the case for East Germany. The U.S. responded quickly with 15 million dollars worth of shipments to Berlin to fight hunger. Eisenhower stated, "we asked no remuneration, no return, no exchange of goods. We just put it there for humanitarian purposes."
Harold Stassen, one of Ike's assistants during the crisis, wrote: "The East Germans remembered who fed them when they starved and remain grateful to this day....the window of freedom those millions of East Germans glimpsed during this period, and their brutalization by the Soviet oppressors, laid the foundations for the political events of 1989. The whole world can thank Dwight Eisenhower for reaching out to "feed the hungry Germans."
JFK set out the logic for the program saying, "Food is strength, and food is peace, and food is freedom, and food is a helping to people around the world whose good will and friendship we want."
Yet the program has always had a purpose beyond the humanitarian one. As Eisenhower said, the legislation will "lay the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products with lasting benefits to ourselves and people of other lands."
In other words, let's help our farmers at the same time as we help hungry people in places that might breed war and terrorism without our help.
Food for Peace was actually an outgrowth of the Marshall Plan to help rebuild war torn countries after World War II.
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