The situation in Africa has another dimension totally ignored on this thread. We must rely on the African people to battle Islamofascism in their own lands. The 1998 embassy bombings occurred in Kenya and Tanzania, two East African countries with sizable regional Muslim populations. Terrorist-dominated Sudan commits genocide against Christians, animists, and even other Muslims. Despite its large Muslim population, Ethiopia today battles Somalia. The Lord's Resistance Army terrorizes and steals the children of northern Uganda but operates largely in the Congo with Sudanese assistance. Muslims battle Christians for dominance of Nigeria.
If Christian missionaries and American doctors can penetrate their way through the thuggish governments to the African people, then we can use those people as a base and barrier in the long twilight struggle against the Islamofascists. Some African countries--particularly South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Spain--are actually as advanced as Mexico. Other West African countries have not prospered but continue to display encouraging signs that they will throw away the yoke of socialism and instill representative government.
I cannot say whether or to what extent the African aid programs actually help ordinary diseased people, but to the extent that they do work, they allow us to cultivate and strengthen potential allies in a region of the world that otherwise might harbor terrorists. People sick with any of the numerous endemic diseases of Africa cannot fight effectively and often cannot provide even a meager diet for their families. As part of our battle against Islamofascist terrorism, we should find constitutional ways to check the spread of Islam in Africa and elsewhere. Local and foreign missionaries can continue to spread Christianity, the first step toward building a Western civilization that depends upon the merger of strong Christian faith and scientific reason.
Your point is good. If we can help fuel Ethiopia's b*tch-slapping of the Islamo-nuts, I'm all for it. I'm just tired of fueling thugs' offshore accounts and palace-building mania, as we did with lowlifes like Arafat for decades. That made no sense whatsoever.