Ran across this last night...This is as good a place to post it as any...
Thought it was interesting....Follow the money...and all that. No wonder Kenya isn’t talking. 8X is a lot of money.
According to a study, U.S. Arms Exports and Military Assistance in the “Global War on Terror, compiled by the Center for Defense Information at the World Security Institute last September: (2008???)
Kenya is considered a vital U.S. ally in the war on terror and has supported U.S. counterterrorism efforts by sharing intelligence, providing overflight rights and granting access to airfields and bases. The State Department considers Kenya to be a “front-line state” in the war on terror and this counterterrorism cooperation has yielded an increase in U.S. military assistance for Kenya since Sept. 11, 2001.
In the five years after Sept. 11, Kenya received nearly eight times the amount of military assistance it received in the five years prior to Sept. 11.
It’s situations like this one with Kenya that bring to mind George Washington’s warning about foreign entanglements and how our nation should avoid those completely. International commerce ought to be encouraged but not devolve into the kind of military/political situation we now have in Kenya or Saudi Arabia. I don’t view either nation as a true friend of ours.
Why did our founders not want us involved in foreign adventures? Because no one can predict the future and the results are uncontrollable. That is particularly so when when we’ve ignored or overlooked a pertinent fact: in this case, Kenya has a large Muslim population. The possibilities exist for intelligence compromise or, even worse, a doublecross.
We’ve also treated Saudi Arabia as a ‘valued’ ally in the War on Terror and have overlooked their less friendly activities in our nation and abroad. This has been to our detriment. There are Islamic Centers in the U.S. which have proved to be providing cover for Al Qaeda activities. We now know that Prince Alaweed paid for Obama’s Harvard education and that millions of dollars of money poured into Obama’s campaign in 2008 from foreign sources in Africa and the Middle East. The Saudis have a political/religous agenda completely at odds with our belief in liberty and equality for all.
We don’t need just a change in our government’s leadership: we need to change how the military, CIA, and State Department operates overseas.