Last month, the government again sought to use its food aid programs more for the political requirements of American foreign policy and the interests of agribusiness rather than to meet the needs of starving people. Last year, the government used nearly 70 percent of its food shipments for U.S. political objectives in Vietnam and Cambodia. Food For Peace, as the program is euphemistically called, thus becomes food for war and helps to perpetuate rather than overcome the causes of conflict around the world.
This year, the administration, led by Henry Kissinger, again tried to use Food For Peace to provide political support for its diplomatic favorites: South Vietnam (where there is a war being fought that is supposed to be over, so we fight it by proxy -- giving the Thieu dictatorship all the money and firepower needed to win for us); South Korea (where so many Christians have been put in jail for protesting the military regime); Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (because we do need their oil to maintain the GNP); Chile (you remember Chile, that’s where the CIA helped “destabilize” and overturn the Allende government to “prevent one party rule” so that a new military government of complete one party rule could take power -- the new party, of course, being far more sympathetic to American economic and military interests than was Allende’s party); and others.
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