Good morning. A piece in Reuters this morning tells us that InterAction — an alliance of nongovernmental foreign assistance groups — does not approve of President Bush’s linkage of foreign aid to national security.

“The administration has increasingly turned its attention to development assistance as a tool of the war on terrorism,'’ InterAction said in a policy paper.

They also complained that the DoD had too great a role in distributing foreign aid in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is a no-brainer, but is seems we’re not dealing with people who have human brains in the metaphysical sense. At this level of cognition, abstracting beyond a simple “They need money, so give it to them” is impossibility.

The report also complains that the work of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), set up by Prez John F. “Ask Not” Kerry — er, Kennedy — forty years ago. The good folks at InterAction complain that the work formerly done by USAID is now being performed by other agencies.

There has been a long-standing effort to dismantle USAID and a lot of blame has been leveled at them. One way of doing this has been to disburse aid to other departments,'’ said one aid agency source.

“Social justice.” That’s the term InterAction likes to call it.

Social Justice. Consider first the ultimate source of the monies in question.