The Stuff They Left Out

The truth behind Samantha Power's (and others') selective description of USAID

What a long, strange week it's been

Former USAID administrator Samantha Power made the media rounds this week, first appearing Tuesday night on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Before introducing his guest, Colbert referred to the foreign aid agency as being “hell bent on helping people.”

He then proceeded to ask his audience, “Should it be saved, or should we allow the unelected, richest man in the world to, on a whim, cut off lifesaving funding to some of the poorest people in the world?”

Following his flourish of stupidity, Colbert introduced the (also) unelected, Irish-born Samantha Power, who, after having served as US ambassador to the UN under the Obama administration, led the US Agency for International Development during most of Joe Biden's term.

Power vehemently defended USAID’s work, its importance to those in need, and its value to US security.

“This is an investment in our stability, in our security, and in our alliances,” she insisted.

Colbert then asked her how she viewed the current threat to the agency’s funding.

“Programs that we’re running that people are depending on, like medicine, if you have HIV, that keeps you alive,” she began. “Or if you’re in Sudan and you have a child who’s wasting away because of malnutrition…all of those programs are shuttered.”

She talked about how authoritarian nations would benefit from USAID’s absence on the world stage.

“Those (beneficiary) countries were turning toward the United States because we offer an entirely different value proposition that is rooted, fundamentally, in caring about the people in the countries in which we work.”

People should care, she insisted, because of the work USAID has done regarding small pox, polio, TB, bird flu, ebola, and the establishment of vaccination clinics.

Of course, all of those things are true and vital. USAID has, without question, saved lives.

I don't deny that the agency has funded some of the most successful public health interventions in history, to include George W. Bush's President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which continues to provide antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV/AIDS in more than 50 countries, and has saved an estimated 26 million lives since the program began in 2003.

I've seen USAID in action in places like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I can attest that they do great things and that their efforts have the potential to enhance our alliances and our national security. For those reasons, I sincerely hope that American foreign assistance can be resumed in short order.

However, it's important to note that Power also managed to leave out a bunch of stuff. As have the Associated Press, Politico, and others, all of which I’ll get to shortly.

Power told Colbert's audience about “distortions and inventions about what USAID programming is” and the “need to get the story out there about… how many lives have been saved, about how US security is advanced, how US prosperity and markets for American goods are being created by the work we do in the economic sphere.”

On Thursday, she resurfaced on Anderson Cooper 360°, where she pretty much repeated what she'd said two nights earlier, calling the cuts to USAID "devastating" and once again referring to her former agency as "the ground game for American foreign policy and the face of American values."

Gee, I certainly hope not.

What she failed to mention