David Beasley, the U.N. World Food Program director, is right to challenge billionaire Elon Musk and others to donate to fight world hunger. Beasley has been pleading for the help of billionaires all year and recently Elon Musk responded on Twitter.
What Musk should realize is that donating to feed the hungry saves lives and helps build world peace. And help is needed now more than ever. Conflict, climate change and the pandemic have led to the biggest hunger crisis since the World War II era.
What did we do back then? We fed the hungry, including a heroic airlift that saved millions in the Netherlands. We also took action when famine threatened hundreds of millions in the aftermath of the war. Citizens, including the wealthy, responded to the challenge.
The September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows organization was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote: “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” Only through actions for peace can we save future generations from tragedy.
As we remember the loss of nearly 3,000 people from 20 years ago on Sept. 11, 2001, we also mourn 13 U.S. soldiers killed in a terrorist attack last month in Afghanistan. The soldiers were evacuating civilians from Kabul after the Taliban takeover.
Twenty years of war did not bring Afghanistan stability and peace. The war cost thousands of lives of both soldiers and civilians. The September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows were right to call for “nonviolent and reasoned responses to the terrorist attacks.” More people should have listened.
It is fitting that the upcoming summit meeting between President Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin takes place in Geneva, for it was there in 1955 when President Dwight Eisenhower made a daring proposal to the Russian leaders of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
A month before Eisenhower headed to Geneva, the United States actually held a training exercise for nuclear war called Operation Alert. Hope for peace with Russia amid a nuclear arms race was desperately needed.
It was President Dwight Eisenhower who said, “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.”
The citizens of America and Russia want peace, including disarming the two largest nuclear weapons arsenals in the world. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin must remember this June 16 when they meet at the summit in Geneva and beyond.
The G7 Summit must confront the growing risk of famine in many countries (White House photo)
The G7 summit this weekend in the United Kingdom must not only tackle a global pandemic, but also famine. Both crises impact the other. Severe food shortages are threatening many nations and the G7 must take action to help.
President Joe Biden will need to show leadership at the summit, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom.
The United Nationsis warning that more than 34 million people are one step away from starvation. And millions more are on the brink. Yemen, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, the Sahel region of Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and Ethiopia are some of the regions suffering extreme hunger.
It was 75 years ago this May when the first CARE packages of food began arriving in Europe to feed the hungry. This new charity, know then Co-operative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE), represented the very best of America.
At first using Army surplus rations in Germany, CARE started giving boxes of food to the hungry in Europe. Just a year after World War II, Europeans were suffering because of severe food shortages. The destruction from the war and also harsh weather had left Europe in ruins and unable to produce enough food.
Through CARE, American citizens could donate and help European families through difficult post war years. Every CARE package was food and hope for a continent on the doorstep of famine.
General Lucius Clay, who headed the American forces in Germany, pleaded for CARE packages for the hungry. Clay wrote, “When a CARE package arrived the consumer knew it was aid from America and that even the bitterness of war had not destroyed our compassion for suffering.”
In America newspapers had ads showing how to buy a CARE package to send overseas to a hungry family in Europe. Or you might head to a store and buy one. You could select a general family package or even one geared specifically to infants to fight child malnutrition. In Cincinnati, Ohio Siegfried Deutsch bought 35 CARE packages. For Deutsch these packages had extra meaning because he was from Austria, where CARE packages were sent to relieve food shortages. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that one of Deutsch’s CARE packages went to a mother and her young daughter in Vienna, Austria.
Also in Cincinnati a WWI veteran, Victor Heintz, walked into a store and bought a CARE package to send to France. Heintz had fought in France during WWI. Now he was still able to help France through CARE food packages.
President Truman addressed the nation while donating CARE packages himself. During the holidays of 1947 Americans set aside an empty plate at dinner representing a “silent guest,” one of Europe’s hungry. Families would then donate to feed that “silent guest” and this led to CARE packages of food being sent to Europe. President Eisenhower had CARE packages sent to Europe his first Christmas in office through Operation Reindeer (Santa Claus).
While CARE originally helped feed Europe, it has since expanded operations to Africa, Asia and other areas in need with a wide range of humanitarian programs. One of CARE’s biggest programs during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years was bringing school meals to hungry children throughout the world.
Now 75 years after its start, CARE is on the front lines of the biggest hunger crisis since the WWII era. Famine is threatening multiple nations including Yemen, South Sudan, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
CARE, along with a group of charities, calls for world leaders to dedicate at least one day’s worth of military spending toward food aid. There should be more resources to fight hunger. There should be less resources for heavy armaments and more for programs like infant feeding and the McGovern-Dole global school meals program.
We need more CARE and compassion toward those who are suffering in hunger today around the globe. CARE and its partner charities on the front lines are working every day to bring relief to those in need. We should do everything possible to support them during this time of a global pandemic and severe hunger crisis.
The 75 years of CARE will be celebrated in a special event Tuesday, May 11th featuring President Biden and former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. For more information visit CARE.
William Lambers is an author who partnered with the UN World Food Program on the book Ending World Hunger, His writings have been published by the Washington Post, History News Network, Newsweek and many other news outlets.
President Joe Biden‘s plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan must be accompanied by a massive increase in food aid. If Afghanistan is to gain stability and peace, we have to help stop the hunger crisis happening there.
The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) stated nearly 17 million Afghans are living with severe hunger. That amounts to almost half the population struggling to find food.
Dwight Eisenhower was worried on Election Day in 1956, but not about winning the presidency for the second time. “I don’t give a darn about the election,” he said that day.
Eisenhower was busy trying to avoid World War III. An invasion of Egypt launched days earlier by Israel, France and Great Britain threatened to spiral into a much wider conflict. The fighting had erupted over control of the Suez Canal, a valuable shipping waterway in Egypt connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
Britain and France had owned the canal, but Egypt had seized and nationalized it that summer to help pay for a dam building project. The Suez crisis would turn violent at the end of October when Israel, France and Britain used military force to resolve the issue. Eisenhower was furious.
Dwight Eisenhower was worried on Election Day in 1956, but not about winning the presidency for the second time. “I don’t give a darn about the election,” he said that day.
Eisenhower was busy trying to avoid World War III. An invasion of Egypt launched days earlier by Israel, France and Great Britain threatened to spiral into a much wider conflict. The fighting had erupted over control of the Suez Canal, a valuable shipping waterway in Egypt connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
Britain and France had owned the canal, but Egypt had seized and nationalized it that summer to help pay for a dam building project. The Suez crisis would turn violent at the end of October when Israel, France and Britain used military force to resolve the issue. Eisenhower was furious.
Author William Lambers 