'Merica

So, did you know about the American Embassy in Nepal? Little Nepal whose average GDP is about 256$/year, a country about the size of Alabama, has a 75 million dollar state-of-the-art American Embassy. Beautiful, don't we love our cowboys. Protectin' us from all those craaazy intimidating Nepalese with pop-guns loaded with bananas and rice. Oh good.

It was built a few years ago in a super-covert operation in which Turkish people were imported, built one part of the facility, then exported before they knew too much. I know that Nepal is close to Pakistan and other "dangerous areas," but if you don't want people to pay attention to you, don't attract attention with a multi-million dollar facility. It begs the question, what are you hiding behind all that security and money?

Anyways, behind this all is the fact that Nepal is located strategically between India and China, two up-and-coming industrial giants. Still, it seems against all "good christian values" to build this huge facility in the middle of a destitute country. Literally, lepers, beggars, men without eyes or legs sit next to women shrunken from malnutrition as they nurse babies with flies in their eyes and mouths. It is like a city about to either explode into chaos, or implode from immense poverty. No law enforcement in Kathmandu. No sanitary system in Kathmandu- raw sewage runs in the streets, big "nice" streets. No water in Kathmandu not contaminated with all forms of typhus, dengue fever, yellow fever, hepatitis (any letter) ..and on and on.

I do not claim to know what to do to solve the problem, but I don't think the answer skirts around spending millions of dollars in the faces of people with nothing. If you want to make people hate you, rub your success in their faces that they already can't pick up out of the dirt. Not only does this embassy have a massive compound of government offices, they have an even more imposing structure for "recreation." Heated olympic pools, soccer field, workout gym, McDonalds (the only one in Nepal) basketball court, 9-hole golf, arcade, etc.