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With the "shutdown" of USAID, the State department has ordered an emergency evacuation of all staff from over a hundred countries by Saturday. In their wake they will leave massive chaos. USAID feeds 53 million people a year, among other things. Many, many people are dying because of this, and many countries will never trust the US again.

USAID is a major part of American international soft power. The damage that this is causing can only be described as treasonous, even ignoring the human cost.

To be clear, this evacuation is impossible. Doing it from one country is very hard. Doing it everywhere all at once, even with all available military airlift assets, cannot happen. Regardless, on whatever schedule they do do this, this is not a normal international move. They are telling staff who in some cases have been in country for decades or who expected to be their for the rest of their careers that they have 48 hours to pack suitcases and leave everything else they own behind, to return to a country where they have no where to live and no job.

But then, that's the point.