My wife made an interesting point this morning in response to Bono's appearance on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC. Bono had just returned from refugee camps in Jordan and near Somalia ... and said that these huge displacements pose an existential threat to Europe if their refugees were all to be absorbed therein.
He said that the answer to this threat was for the developed world, particularly the United States, to help these areas of the world with economic development ... so that their people will not be tempted to exit their hellholes. We need to show them how to raise themselves through better sanitation, better farming, better governance, better industry and stronger trade. (I'm extrapolating here a little from Bono's comments.) Kinda like a new Marshall Plan.
My wife's observation was that Bono's recommendation of outreach to these underdeveloped areas sounds a lot like what happened a century ago when the European nations engaged in an orgy of colonialism ... which did greatly benefit, at least economically, these areas of the world.
It seems to me that there is at least a germ of truth to her observation. If we listen to Bono and help lift these areas of the world out of their downward spirals, will we then be cursed later on as evil colonialists? The irony is palpable.
