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Employees and supporters protest outside the headquarters for United States Agency for International Development (USAID), on Monday, February 3, 2025, after Elon Musk posted on social media that he and President Donald Trump would shut down the agency.<\/p>\n
(Bill Clark \/ CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com<\/a>. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n What put the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with an annual budget hovering at just about 1 percent of federal spending, at the top of Elon Musk\u2019s budget-cutting target list? Was it just a political calculation that foreign aid is a safe target because it\u2019s unpopular with so many Americans and cutting those funds will only hurt foreigners, not US voters? Or was Musk motivated by some other grudge we haven\u2019t even heard about?<\/p>\n A related question: Why is his invective about that particular agency\u2014\u201ca criminal organization<\/a>,\u201d \u201ca viper\u2019s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America<\/a>,\u201d and similar blasts\u2014so much more inflammatory in tone and content than his statements about other government programs?<\/p>\n As reported by various<\/a> news organizations<\/a>, one of Musk\u2019s principal influencers on this issue appears to have been a man named Mike Benz, who served in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and briefly in the State Department during President Trump\u2019s first term. Benz has spent the last few years promoting implausible conspiracy theories<\/a> about USAID\u2014that it played a key role in paying for the 2019 attempt to impeach Trump, that it financed the creation of the Covid virus in a Chinese laboratory, that it funds \u201call the terrorist groups in Pakistan [and] terrorist groups in the Sahel in Africa,\u201d and numerous other wildly exaggerated or completely unfounded charges. Benz seems to have been the source of a number of Musk\u2019s specific allegations, most of them unsupported by any evidence, about corrupt or unjustified foreign aid projects.<\/p>\n This record leads to another question: What does Elon Musk really know about US foreign aid, the agency staff that delivers it, or the people who receive it? Besides listening to Mike Benz\u2019s falsehoods, has he made any effort to do his own investigation? Has he ever personally seen a recipient of US foreign aid, or someone whose job is to deliver it? Has he ever come face to face with a West African who depends on USAID for lifesaving medicine against deadly tropical disease,<\/a> or a family driven from their home by war in Afghanistan<\/a>, Sudan<\/a>, or Ukraine<\/a>, or one of the hundreds of thousands of hungry children in Haiti<\/a> who face starvation without USAID food assistance? Has he ever spoken directly with anyone who could tell him firsthand about the work USAID staffers do, the people they help, or the hardships and dangers they often face on the job?<\/p>\n Someone like Christine Sheckler perhaps?<\/p>\n A Life Helping Others<\/p>\n Christine Sheckler, now retired, spent 27 years working for USAID, including two years in wartime Iraq. Other postings included tours in Sierra Leone, then recovering from a decade of civil war that had left 50,000 people dead and driven more than two million from their homes, as well as in several former Soviet republics, Pakistan, and other countries. In the real world, it\u2019s an all-but-sure bet that she will never have a conversation with Elon Musk, but I\u2019ve wondered what such a conversation might have been like, and whether Musk might have modified his views in any way after listening to her\u2014say, as a start, about her experiences in Iraq.<\/p>\n Current Issue<\/p>\n Sheckler served in Iraq from 2008 to 2010, the years when Musk was putting his first Teslas on the road and (one can guess) paying little attention, or possibly none at all, to America\u2019s already disastrous war in Iraq, Americans serving there, or the war\u2019s impact on Iraqi civilians. She did not spend those years in the Green Zone<\/a>, the well-protected seven-square-mile enclave in Baghdad where the American embassy and buildings housing the Iraqi government stood behind concrete and barbed-wire barriers and checkpoints manned by US and other allied troops who controlled all traffic into or out of the area. Sheckler was based in the much more dangerous Red Zone, in the district of Abu Ghraib, a prominent staging area for insurgent attacks (and the site of the notorious prison<\/a> of the same name where American troops brutalized Iraqi inmates).<\/p>\n \u201cIt was hard,\u201d Sheckler says, recalling her time there. \u201cEvery minute was dangerous.\u201d In the course of her work, focused on helping farmers, small-business owners, and local governments, she regularly traveled to less secure areas of the region, often meeting with local sheikhs. In those meetings, she took off her helmet and other protective gear, a \u201ccalculated risk,\u201d to avoid sending a message that she didn\u2019t trust the Iraqis she was dealing with.<\/p>\n On two occasions, her work put her in immediate danger. The first was at a small building in downtown Baghdad where Sheckler had attended a meeting of the Baghdad local city council. She had just left in an armored vehicle (the type commonly called an MRAP, for Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected), heading for the nearby US embassy, and had ridden only a few blocks when the driver was ordered to turn around because the city council had just been attacked. After parking a block away, in case of another attack, Sheckler and several other passengers walked the rest of the way back to the council building, where a suicide bomber driving a vehicle loaded with explosives had been stopped by a barricade in front of the building and had then smashed into a parked MRAP outside the wall, setting off his blast. The bomber was killed, along with the driver and a passenger in a taxi following his vehicle, but although the explosion shattered parts of the roof of the council building and blew out all its windows, showering the people inside with broken glass, \u201cby some miracle,\u201d as Sheckler put it, there were no other casualties.<\/p>\n Some months later, she was riding in a vehicle immediately behind the Humvee (a military truck) at the head of a convoy, when a small white car coming from the opposite direction rolled to a stop a short way ahead. From her car, just 20 feet behind the lead vehicle, she saw a man get out with a phone in his hand, which he then used to set off an EFP (an explosively formed penetrator<\/a>, a projectile carrying a superheated copper warhead that can be launched from a distance and punch through most protective armor). The blast blew the Humvee into the air, sending it flying into a pasture on the far side of the road, wounding the three soldiers and a civilian riding in it. The most seriously wounded was the driver, who lost his right leg below the knee and suffered a shattered lower left leg and massive internal and external burns. Sheckler knew him and all her convoy soldiers, since the same unit escorted her every day on her travels around the district.<\/p>\n A project she remembers with particular pride from her time in Iraq was the reconstruction of the University of Baghdad College of Agriculture, located in Abu Ghraib, which had been completely destroyed earlier in the war. With USAID help, the college was rebuilt, including a room with audiovisual equipment so students and instructors could communicate with other schools. When it reopened, the school offered local farmers training in improved methods of irrigation and water use, helping to revive dairy farming and grain harvests in a vital food-producing region.<\/p>\n It was an \u201cimportant partnership,\u201d Sheckler said, which not only benefited Iraqi farmers but also significantly changed local feeling about the American presence, as one sheikh after another told her at a farewell meeting at the end of her tour. \u201cWhen Christine came here two years ago, we hated America and we hated the American people,\u201d she remembers one of them saying as they sent her off with a gift. \u201cBut if Christine represents the American people, we love the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n Summing up her time in Iraq, Sheckler remembers not just the danger and her arduous daily schedule (\u201c6 am to after midnight, pretty much every day\u201d) but the immense satisfaction she drew from the work she did. \u201cWe spent a lot of money doing supergood things and I am superproud of that.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s no less proud of her work in other countries, particularly during local council elections in the African country of Sierra Leone, where women hoped for more representation in a society in which, as one international think tank reported in 2009<\/a> during Sheckler\u2019s tour there, \u201cGender relations\u2026are extremely unequal and Sierra Leonean women face high levels of exclusion, violence, and poverty.\u201d Gender inequality became a more visible issue in the aftermath of the 1990s civil war there, when huge numbers of women became victims of sexual violence or endured devastating hunger and poverty after their husbands were killed.<\/p>\n Working with a team from the National Democratic Institute<\/a>, a nongovernmental organization, Sheckler helped bring female ministers and parliamentarians from all over Africa to find local women throughout Sierra Leone with leadership skills and meet, encourage, and mentor women candidates in the elections. The delegation traveled around the country, riding in old vehicles on rough roads, often crossing paths with Sheckler, who was also on the move to monitor and evaluate the results of the election strategy and leadership training. In the end, in a genuine breakthrough, women won 20 percent of the local council seats, up from 11 percent in the previous councils. That result left Sheckler feeling \u201csuperproud,\u201d not just about her own contribution but perhaps more importantly about \u201cthe strength, wisdom, determination, and resilience of the Sierra Leonean women\u201d she had worked with.<\/p>\n Ad Policy<\/a><\/p>\n Would Musk Listen?<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s return to Elon Musk, and imagine the Tesla chief and DOGE warrior\u2019s conversation with Sheckler. Obviously, there\u2019s no way to know if hearing her reminiscences would have moderated any of his opinions or policy decisions when it came to the utter dismantling of AID. Possibly, perhaps probably, no one like her would change his thinking an iota. This is the guy, after all, who believes that empathy is \u201cthe fundamental weakness of Western civilization<\/a>\u201d because it can supposedly be, as he put it, \u201cweaponized\u201d by enemies to exploit our humane impulses for sinister purposes. And one wonders if Musk can even begin to comprehend a life built around helping other people, or any other purpose except personal gain.<\/p>\n He may think that American soldiers have no obligation to ease civilian suffering in war\u2014a view that President Trump\u2019s defense secretary Pete Hegseth apparently adopted as official policy when he moved to shut down<\/a> the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response office and other Defense Department programs aimed at preventing civilian harm (or at least responding to it) during US combat operations. Accordingly, rather than thanking Sheckler for her work in Iraq, he might argue that she should never have been sent there in the first place. Similarly, it would be no surprise if Musk believes that the United States has no business interfering with the oppression of women in Sierra Leone or anywhere else, and so sees Sheckler\u2019s project there and similar programs elsewhere not as steps toward greater fairness but as a pure waste of American taxpayer dollars (if, indeed, he accepts the idea that women\u2019s rights are a legitimate issue in the first place, which is by no means a certainty).<\/p>\n \n Popular So, it\u2019s not unreasonable to imagine that talking to Musk would be a complete waste of Sheckler\u2019s time. As a possible alternative, she could tell her stories to Republican members of Congress, particularly those who loudly proclaim their Christian faith, which might suggest a different view from Musk\u2019s about empathy (though again I wouldn\u2019t count on it). In that scenario, if Sheckler manages to speak with any senators or representatives, perhaps she could see them together with Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times journalist whose eyewitness reporting<\/a> in Sudan and Kenya documented the deaths of a number of children and adults directly attributed to the suspension of US foreign aid programs\u2014conclusively refuting Musk\u2019s false claim that no one had died because of the USAID cutback.<\/p>\n Maybe listening to Sheckler and Kristof together would persuade at least a few Republican lawmakers to break their shameful silence. Perhaps they would not only speak out against Musk\u2019s and Trump\u2019s assault on USAID, but act to restore fired employees and reinstate discontinued aid programs. That would not save lives already lost or prevent many more unnecessary deaths caused by the interruptions in AID programs that have already occurred but could help limit the toll in future years. So far, regrettably, there\u2019s no sign that anything like that will happen.<\/p>\n When Musk, Trump, and their subordinates speak about USAID programs or government spending in general, they incessantly repeat the words \u201cwaste, fraud, and abuse.\u201d Waste is a legitimate issue, more so in some agencies than others. But by any realistic standard, fraud and abuse come overwhelmingly from the Trump-Musk side, not from federal employees. Fraud is the right word for their false reasoning and wildly exaggerated claims of dollars saved, and the record shows abuses too numerous to count\u2014false claims of poor performance<\/a> by fired government workers, disrupting mental health services for veterans<\/a>, attempting to intimidate judges<\/a> whose rulings they don\u2019t like, and closing the door on refugees who had already been approved for admission to the United States (including many Afghans<\/a> who fought alongside American troops in the failed war against the Taliban). And don\u2019t forget the once-preventable deaths of many thousands of people who would have lived if USAID had continued its work in their countries\u2014the work that people like Christine Sheckler and thousands of other staffers did all over the world, demonstrating a moral commitment that Americans today urgently need to preserve, not destroy.<\/p>\n The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s catastrophic \u201cLiberation Day\u201d has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called \u201cenemy aliens\u201d are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.<\/p>\n At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump\u2019s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.<\/p>\n In just the last month, we\u2019ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration\u2019s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.<\/p>\n We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections\u2014like Wisconsin\u2019s recent state Supreme Court race\u2014that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can\u2019t buy our democracy.<\/p>\n This is the journalism that matters in 2025. But we can\u2019t do this without you. As a reader-supported publication, we rely on the support of generous donors. Please, help make our essential independent journalism possible with a donation today.<\/strong><\/p>\n In solidarity,<\/p>\n The Editors<\/p>\n The Nation<\/p>\n Arnold Isaacs<\/a><\/p>\n Arnold R. Isaacs, a journalist and writer based in Maryland, has written widely on refugee and immigration issues. He is the author of\u00a0From Troubled Lands: Listening to Pakistani and Afghan Americans in post-9\/11 America<\/a> and two books relating to the Vietnam War. His website is www.arnoldisaacs.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore from The Nation<\/p>\n \nThe Trump administration is learning dangerous lessons from El Salvador\u2019s president, but there\u2019s also much that the US left can learn from Salvadoran antifascists.\n<\/p>\n \n Roberto Lovato<\/a> <\/p>\n \nIsrael has returned to full-scale slaughter in Gaza. Western outlets have returned to the same disastrous coverage of the past 18 months.\n<\/p>\n \n Assal Rad<\/a> <\/p>\n \nNuclear plants are prime targets in wartime Ukraine. Renewables are safer, cheaper\u2014and already on the rise.\n<\/p>\n \n Paul Hockenos<\/a> <\/p>\n \nAt a Jalisco ranch, investigators found bone fragments and three suspected crematoria. Families toured the camp, hoping to find clues about their missing family members.\n<\/p>\n \n Ivonne Ortiz<\/a> <\/p>\n \nThe European Union\u2019s rush to increase military spending is as much about appeasing Washington as achieving actual \u201cstrategic autonomy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Harrison Stetler<\/a> <\/p>\n \nAfter mobilizing to defend democracy and meet people\u2019s immediate needs, the radical Marxist organization emerged from the Bolsonaro regime stronger than ever.\n<\/p>\n \n
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