Why do we offer federal aid to countries without some form of compensation?

Question

I'm not necessarily referring to monetary repayment of loans, more rather, use of lands and resources that these countries have at their disposal that would be of value to us.

Answer 1

Your "aid" is usually excess food that you would have thrown out that is required to be carried by American shipping lines or military sales for which you extend and forgive loans.

Any other aid is overlaid with restrictions on how it must be used that conform with America's idea of right and wrong, for example, funding health clinics only if they preach abstinence as the sole form of birth control, a system known not to be effective.

America does not give altruistically anymore.

Answer 2

Don't we??

There are places where we do drop food when there are earthquakes, etc

And some of those places might not give us a return.  But even a gazillion years ago when I was in high school, I learned that the farmers paid millions of dollars to store their excess grain..to ship it to Russia (etc) was actually cheaper than the silo storage.

Sometimes we use those countries as dumping grounds for things that are illegal in the US.  I believe we sent our DDT over there to fight the "bugs"..Except, did you ever see a ward of people stricken with DDT illnesses??  We saved the disposal and or storage costs for that DDT

Sometimes we send food to try and have some say in who the next dictator will be...we all know what happened with Noriega.  You see, the dictator we choose, may not be the best one for the people, but they are the best ones for us.

And then sometimes a country has oil or some other ingredient that we need.  

If they really have something we want, like land for a military base, etc, we just go in and plow them under-like in Hawaii.  I am sure the Native Americans could give us a few good examples of us just taking what we want.  There are instances where we booted the same ones several times since they ended up with better land than what we wanted them to have.

So, I wouldn't worry about the US getting back apples for apples.

We have become a country that has to wear a pork chop around it's neck for other countries to like us.  So we do give food evey so often

I'm a bit negative at the moment, I have been reading up on a few of our past "indiscretions" and am almost speechless..but not quite.