Using the word sell hesitantly, risks commoditizing a foreign aid program that, as Craig put it "is out of date and fractured." But to a society that thrives off a consumer mentality, wrapped in a capitalistic dome with a pretentious glare, words like sell may work in favor of our cause. Both Carlos and Suzanna Dennis, a research associate with PAI, were on to something that uniquely defines American culture, juggling between an individualistic and communal lifestyle; foreign aid will not get the backing it needs merely because we are "doing good." It needs to deliver not only tangible results, but ones that benefit us. True altruism at its best. And what better results to show our public then ones rooted in National Security.

The discourse and evidence reporting on the links that Foreign Assistance programs focusing on poverty reduction, disease prevention and human rights have between National Security should not be an abstract one. This in fact embodies the work PAI has been conducting for over a decade and is gaining recent coverage by Presidential appointees and objective scholars alike. In a recent article about defense strategies in The Washington Post, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was quoted, "The use of force plays a role, yet military efforts to capture or kill terrorists are likely to be subordinate to measures to promote local participation in government and economic programs to spur development." If a Bush defense czar is succumbing to the importance of Foreign Aid, we are heading in a good direction. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, in his new book Common Wealth, after concluding how much more prone poor countries are to violence espoused that "we need to use development assistance to promote global stability." Craig mentioned today's foreign assistance program is a remnant of the Cold War, a successor to post-WWII programs like the Marshall Plan. But when General Marshall spoke at the time of U.S. efforts to rebuild Europe and Japan, he demanded that "the U.S. should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace."

Maybe it is acceptable to use our U.S. security objectives as a means to promote foreign aid, as long as we do the homework required to convince the public of this link. Granted, a link of indirect causality is but by no means a stretch. It remains unfortunate however that being simply humanitarian is no longer good enough. When a football coach asks the offensive lineman to put on 50 lbs in the off season he doesn't mention that it will benefit the quarterback, or the whole team for that matter, but instead how much fun he will have eating indiscriminately. Maybe an analogy of poor comparison, but one that still triggers human rationality, the same mode of thought that demands ulterior justification for selfless acts such as foreign aid.