Charity should begin at home, not overseas

By: George Maynard

Posted: 3/23/09

As American citizens lose their jobs and life savings here at home, it should make everyone happy to know that our government is still committed to spending hundreds of millions of dollars overseas to prop up governments and economies in other countries.

Sometime within the next few weeks, President Barack Obama is set to unveil a new plan to rescue Pakistan from itself by throwing more money at the corrupt and ineffective government so it can distribute money to its (likely) corrupt and ineffective economic system. Doesn't that sound familiar?

According to Reuters, the Obama administration is planning to triple "developmental" (non-military) aid to Pakistan from its current level of $450 million per year up to $1.35 billion for the next few years. Officials interviewed for the Reuters story also said that there would be few conditions on how this developmental aid would be spent.

That's fantastic! People are having their houses foreclosed on here in the United States, and the government wants to send the same people's money over to Pakistan to help aid in their country's "development." Here in America, we've already proven that handouts for "economic stimulus and development" with no strings attached don't work. Just last week, AIG used hundreds of millions of dollars that it got for a stimulus package to award bonuses of over $1 million to 74 of its executives. Nearly 400 other employees also received bonus checks worth between $1,000 and $1 million. If the government can't control how stimulus money is spent here at home, how do they expect to control how it is being spent overseas, by other countries' governments?

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the tripling of developmental aid to Pakistan is necessary to prove to them that America was interested in the long-term survival of Pakistan's government, not just for the duration of the war in Afghanistan. That assertion is ridiculous. Pakistan is an ally of convenience, and we should stop lying and pretending that relations between our countries are any different.

Even military aid to Pakistan is unjustifiable, however. According to the new administration's plan, military aid is set to increase by an unspecified multiplier from its current level of $300 million per year. Officials say that the rise in military aid would not exceed $1 billion.

Isn't that wonderful? How brave and noble of America to spend our taxpayers' money to equip and train a new force for freedom and democracy in Asia - that is, provided the Pakistani military doesn't take over Pakistan like it has twice already in the past 60 years. Besides the danger of pumping more guns into countries with unstable governments, there are other reasons why the United States shouldn't be paying to arm Pakistan's military. Our own troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are continually asked to do their jobs with outdated equipment. According to Maj. Gen. Jack Stultz, the Army Reserves are under funded by several billion dollars and lack transport and tactical vehicles necessary for victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stories abound of our troops having to scavenge weapons and scrap metal to supply themselves. How can our government afford to spend millions of dollars equipping the soldiers of other countries when our own forces have to weld scrap metal onto their vehicles because there isn't enough armor, or gather ammunition and weapons from fallen Taliban combatants because they don't have enough of their own?

Now, I don't mean to sound callous, as if the lives of Pakistani soldiers are worth less than the lives of American soldiers, but our tax money should be used to protect our own siblings, parents, friends and relatives before it is spent to arm troops who don't answer to our leaders.

America's budget is already running a deficit. Now is not the time to borrow money from China to arm our current allies. Rather, we ought to be taking care of our own and digging ourselves out of the debt that we've sunk into thanks to irresponsible spending by our former president.