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Should we help foreign populations or not?

March 27, 2026

Recently I wrote a column about Republican candidate for Lt. Governor Gloria Romero. Part of the interview involved Romero explaining that she voted for Trump because she saw him as the “president for peace.”

I noted that following Trump’s war in Iran, Romero began posting numerous tweets and retweets in support of the war, most of which were videos of Iranians celebrating the war and the death of the Ayatollah.

On a similar note, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham praised the US bringing freedom to the Iranian people, stating on Twitter that, “The day where Iran is ruled by its people and not the brutal regime is near. I urge the Arab countries to join this fight and help us deliver that freedom across the world.”

Representative Scott Perry addressed Iranians directly: “TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAN: The hour of your freedom has arrived. Your destiny is in your hands. TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT, AND RETURN PERSIA.” Representative Andy Ogles took a short break from Islamophobic posts to send an encouraging message to the Iranians: “I firmly stand with the people of Iran and support their right to take their country back from the mass murderer the Ayatollah.”

What struck me about the Trump supporters who are now justifying the war by appealing to the joy and possible improvement in the lives of the Iranian population is that many of them also cheered gleefully about Trump’s near total elimination of US humanitarian aid and the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provided life-saving aid to over 120 countries in the form of medicine, food, disaster relief, and economic assistance.

USAID’s HIV program had saved about 26 million lives, and its tuberculosis program had prevented an estimated 3.65 million deaths. Both programs were cut last year by the Trump administration.

According to research published in The Lancet, a medical journal, over 14 million people including 4.5 million children under the age of 5 are expected to die by 2030 because of the cuts to US foreign aid made by the Trump administration. Impact modeling suggests that over 750,000 had died a year after the cuts.

While Lindsey Graham blamed the closure of USAID on Democrats for funding a “transgender opera in Colombia” and “EVs in Vietnam,” Republicans in Congress cheered and instructed foreign populations to stand on their own two feet.

“At nearly $37 trillion in national debt – and a $1.8 trillion annual deficit – we can’t afford to continue giving money to countries that hate America and everything we stand for,” said Representative Andy Biggs. Biggs last month voted against a war powers resolution to compel President Trump to end the war in Iran – a war that cost American tax-payers over $11 billion in its first week, not including the war-related price surges for gas and many other goods.

Their use of the well-being of Iranians as a justification for spending billions to topple the Islamic regime is just brazen hypocrisy. According to sources for Reuters, U.S. intelligence indicates that the regime is not in any danger of collapsing, and the prospects for installing a democracy are fading along with the unpopularity of the war.

Even assuming the best case scenario where more benevolent leadership comes to power, it’s absurd to suggest that spending billions to help a foreign population by bombing their country is a worthy cause but sending vaccines and food to starving children is not. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is suggested by the presidential actions Republicans have chosen to support.

Romero flipping from anti-war to pro-war within a matter of hours and Republicans advocating for aid via bombs but not aid via medicine are both examples of how utterly unprincipled our politicians have become in the Trump era.

The spirit of generosity did finally return to Capitol Hill seeing as last month Congress passed a funding bill that included billions in humanitarian aid, including funding for PEPFAR, the program that fights HIV and tuberculosis in low-income countries.

This return marks yet another instance where policy in our country and consequential matters like going to war may as well be decided by the positions of constellations or as the ancient Greeks decided – by interpreting the behaviors of birds in the sky. By standing for nothing and going along with every presidential whim, we get what we have now, which is Trump starting a war with no precise plan for regime succession.

He is now panicking about oil prices and threatening NATO countries unless they help secure the Strait of Hormuz.

The reason we know that his operation was extremely poorly thought out is that competent leadership would have planned for the possibility that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz and then coordinate with allies to plan for a coalition to keep the Strait open before the war, not threaten them once the price of a barrel of oil passed $100.

The threatened European nations responded by stating that the president did not consult with them before starting the war and that they also have no idea what the goals of the administration are.

If we are willing to risk global economic turmoil and spend billions on a war with no plan for the day after, then our refusal to provide life-saving medicine was never about the deficit. All of this is to ask, should we help foreign populations or not?

Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.

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