[Mr. Jeeves]

Africa won't "stay bought" no matter how much money we send them. There will always come a point where a given thug-ocracy will want to buy bigger guns than we are willing to provide the funds for, and they will turn to China, anyway.

I think the "He may be an SOB, but he's our SOB!" philosophy has been conclusively proven a failure. If we would take the foreign aid money (admittedly a tiny piece of the budget) and put it toward cleaning up our own government and setting a better example, we would be a lot better off than engaging int eh equivalent of trying to pay the neighbor kids off so they won't buy crack from that mean guy down the street.

[cinives]

No, if we took the money devoted to foreign aid and foreign adventurism and left it with the taxpayers who earned it we’d be much better off.

I’m sure this will earn me no friends here, but intervening in other countries’ internal affairs have never proven to be a winning strategy. I like the way Israel does it better. No foreign aid, but hurt those who kill Israelis around the world.

We may have destroyed the Barbary pirates off the African coast, but we didn’t need to run their countries or pay off their leaders to make our point.