Vice President Harris went to Vietnam this week, where she announced the pending delivery of a “donation” of two million vaccine doses to that communist regime. Apparently the idea is to show how good, caring, and benevolent the U.S. government is.
Now, don’t be cynical. This “donation” has absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. national-security establishment’s political maneuvering to make China a new official enemy, especially in the wake of the debacle in Afghanistan.
But what I don’t get is this: Why all the goodness and compassion for Vietnam and all the viciousness and brutality against Cuba?
After all, they both are communist countries, right? And it was North Vietnam that killed some 58,000 American men after U.S. forces invaded South Vietnam. As far as I know, Cuba has never killed even one U.S. soldier. [Correction: According to the Wikipedia entry titled “The United States Invasion of Grenada,” “Early on the morning of 26 October, Cuban forces ambushed a patrol from the 2nd Battalion of the 325th Infantry Regiment near the village of Calliste. The American patrol suffered six wounded and two killed.]
Given the U.S. government’s forever war against Cuba, I myself must confess a bit of cynicism. It seems to me that that “donation” of virus vaccines to the communist regime that killed 58,000 American men has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with care and compassion.
After all, if this “donation” was really about care and compassion, the U.S. government would be lifting its cruel and brutal 60-year-old economic embargo against Cuba. Instead, U.S. officials continue to target the Cuban people with starvation and death in the hopes that they rise up and violently replace their communist regime with another crooked, corrupt, and tyrannical U.S. puppet regime.
It’s also worth pointing out that this “donation” is done with money that has been forcibly extracted from the American people through taxation. In other words, it’s not a matter of Harris, President Biden, or any other federal official using their own personal funds to help out the Vietnamese. They are being good with money that has been forcibly extracted from the American people through taxation.
Suppose I force you at the point of a gun to withdraw $10,000 from an ATM and give the money to me. I use it to buy vaccines, which I then donate to the Vietnamese communists.
Would you consider me a good, caring, and compassionate person? Of course not. You would consider me a thief. You’d call the cops on me and support my criminal prosecution, conviction, and punishment.
But suppose instead that I run to the IRS and persuade that agency to take $10,000 from you in taxes and give the money to me. I then use the money to buy vaccines and donate them to the Vietnamese.
Has anything changed from a moral standpoint? Of course not. I’m still a thief. The only difference is that I’ve used the IRS to do my dirty work rather than do it myself.
The question arises: Why should the U.S. government be making “donations” to anyone? Why not instead leave the money in the hands of the American people and let them decide what to do with their own money?
As I have written elsewhere, the Afghanistan debacle should induce Americans to think at a higher level, one that asks whether the United States should restore its founding principle of non-interventionism in foreign affairs. A good way to move in that direction would be to prohibit U.S. officials from making any “donations” to foreign regimes, whether in the form of vaccines, money, armaments, or any other type of foreign aid.