At Thanksgiving time, you remember Squanto, right? He was the Native American who famously helped the Pilgrim settlers survive the brutal New England winter. He taught the new arrivals how to grow and gather the food that kept them from starving. Commemorated in thousands of Thanksgiving skits, he explained how burying a fish with the corn seeds would increase the early farmers’ yields, bequeathing us in the process the makings of the first Thanksgiving.

You might be less familiar with USAID – the United States Agency for International Development – the government agency where I had the honor to also battle starvation in the villages and slums of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Since readers supported USAID’s work with your tax payments – costing about 1 penny per dollar of federal taxes – I am eternally thankful for your generosity.

What do Squanto and USAID have in common? Well, fish for one thing! Squanto first showed the Pilgrim refugees how to catch New England herring, then how to convert the plentiful fish into fertilizer for their corn. Perhaps channeling Squanto, USAID agriculture experts, doctors, literacy specialists, and engineers have grounded their efforts in the maxim: “Give a person a fish, and you feed the person for a day; teach a person to fish, and the person feeds himself or herself for a lifetime.”

That’s good advice. USAID technical experts, while delivering tons of American-farmer-produced emergency food to keep the starving alive – each sack proudly stamped “From the American People” – simultaneously invested in drought resistant seeds and irrigation systems to increase local farmers’ own production. These investments yielded results. While hunger is still a problem in many countries, driven mainly by war and resulting human displacement, the worldwide child mortality rate dropped nearly 60% over the past thirty years, according to UNICEF. [https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/under-five-mortality/]

At a deeper level, the connection between Squanto and USAID has to do with the abiding generosity of the American people. Raised in a nation blessed with the land, climate and skills to produce more food than we can consume, Americans have always focused on preventing hunger – at home and abroad. This sustained commitment to offer thanks for our agricultural bounty by sharing with those most in need is reflected in President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation creating Thanksgiving as a holiday, which celebrated the “blessings of fruitful fields.”

This hopeful news about progress against hunger, however, includes some traumatic and heartbreaking twists, which is why I added the word “tragedy” in the title. For Squanto, his efforts to keep the Pilgrims alive, and build bridges with Native Americans, regrettably devolved within decades into King Philip’s War, one of the bloodiest conflicts ever fought in North America.

And USAID, after decades of bipartisan support in the Congress and from Presidents of both parties, came under harsh attack from President Trump and his agent Elon Musk in January of this year. USAID’s good work of decades – not only to show America’s generosity abroad, but in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy, often side-by-side with American troops – was savagely criticized, based on inaccurate accusations.

Musk, acting without Congressional approval, turned USAID into an empty shell. Nearly 95% of its staff, patriotic Americans from all fifty states, who served our country in the harshest environments, were fired. Among the few who were spared this illegal indignity were the 103 of my patriotic colleagues who died in the line of duty battling hunger, disease, and human suffering across the poorer nations of the world.

The results of the attacks on USAID were predictable. Those not wishing our nation well – in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran – are celebrating the unexpected turn of events, and rushing to take advantage of this ill-considered act of strategic self-mutilation. Children will starve who could have benefitted from even a fraction of America’s food abundance, or die from preventable diseases. Denials in Washington of these facts are inaccurate and abhorrent.

Personally, I will still be celebrating Thanksgiving with family this year; still making a contribution to my local food bank; and still marveling at the generosity of the American people. But, I will also be aware of the particular, and peculiar, tragedy affecting USAID and wounding our country’s historic, incomparable battle against hunger, at home and overseas.

After the holidays, I’ll be checking with my Senators and U.S. Representative to see whether they will fight to re-open USAID, and put the United States 100% back in the fight against world hunger. That would be the right, generous, and American thing to do. And, by the way, I believe Squanto, and the Pilgrims he helped keep alive during our nation’s first food aid program, would agree.