Effective Foreign Aid from Whatcom

In 1993 retinal surgeon Richard Munsen of Seattle spent nearly a month performing operations and teaching Chinese doctors in Beijing, Chengzhou, Xian, and Hangzhou. In donating these medical services, he modeled how Americans can try to assist others in the world.

As we contemplate moving troops into yet another country, Syria, to protect its people against a tyrant and to encourage democracy, we need to assess the United States’ military and political successes and failures in such endeavors. Effective occupations of foreign lands, military and missionary, include Hawaii, Alaska, Germany, Japan. Ineffective efforts have been Haiti, Cuba, the Philippines, and Vietnam among others. In Haiti the U.S. Marines landed in l916 to establish a protectorate, then withdrew in 1934.

It remains unclear how our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan will turn out — note the key word “occupation,” not “war,” to accurately describe our long-term role in both countries. When we accidentally kill civilians, including nine children gathering wood last spring, chances of success sharply diminish. On the positive side, Alaska and Hawaii indicate that non-military methods offer better chances of transforming foreign lands into our image.

When faced with helping people in other nations, we confront a set of distinct choices: abstain and observe, assist and call for reform, intervene and fight, bribe, convert. The least dangerous and most helpful is Dr. Munson’s tactic of assisting and helping when welcome. But in doing so we should not seek to reform the social, moral and religious beliefs of other people. The Peace Corps as well as some Christian missions have been examples of this strategy.

A cautious approach embodies traditional, conservative American doctrine. It found expression in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, in Washington’s and Eisenhower’s Farewell Addresses. Yes, we must defend ourselves, but not seek out dragons to slay worldwide. And according to our Constitution, when necessary we must declare war before resorting to war, a principle that Congress has ignored since 1942.

Yes, we should seek to spread social justice, democracy, and universal human rights, but only when other people invite us to help. In weighing such matters, it pays to study our own history. After 1776 how did a ragtag army of insurgents defeat the powerful British Empire? Why, after a dozen years following the civil war, did the North’s military occupation fail to “reconstruct” the South? Conversely, why did our post-World War II reconstructions of Japan and Germany prove successful? History indeed may have some lessons.

We have a recent local example of creative citizen-led foreign intervention. It resembles Richard Munsen’s effort by involving vision care as well as other medical services.

At the beginning of 2011 a Peace Health group of twenty-six skilled volunteers spent ten days in El Salvador. Among them were nurses, pharmacists, a pediatric physician, two other M.D.s, three oculists, a midwife, and an optician. Working in the countryside near San Rafael, they examined 1300 Salvadoran men, women and children. They distributed vitamins, baby formula, toothbrushes, and 900 pairs of glasses donated by the Lions Club. Among the eight volunteers from Whatcom were former County Council member Ken Henderson of Bellingham and Jennifer Hill from Lynden. “Every day,” Hill recalls, “I shed tears of thankfulness.

Tears for the beautiful gray-haired woman who cried because she could see to sew with the glasses we put on her, the little girl who was legally blind but could now read in the readers we found for her, the man who thought he looked ‘stylin’ in the sunglasses he received, the beautiful babies I got to kiss, the wonderful children who come to visit each day. And the list goes on.”

How to defeat terrorists and drug gangs? How to spread democratic values? How to win hearts and minds? No perfect method exists, but a year ago in El Salvador the examples of Henderson and Hill with Peace Health and the Lions accomplished far more, far cheaper, and far more humanely than do shock-and-awe drones, guided missiles, or Blackwater mercenaries and U.S. soldiers hidden in eighty pounds of body armor. It’s more effective to avoid pious preaching or compelling with force, but instead simply to set an inspiring example.