Posted on 09/19/2016 7:00:04 AM PDT by VitacoreVision
Last week’s announcement of a record-breaking US aid package for Israel underscores how dangerously foolish and out-of-touch is our interventionist foreign policy. Over the next ten years, the US taxpayer will be forced to give Israel some $38 billion dollars in military aid. It is money we cannot afford going to a country that needs no assistance to maintain its status as the most powerful military in the Middle East.
All US foreign aid is immoral and counterproductive. As I have often said, it is money taken from poor people in the US and sent to rich people overseas. That is because US assistance money goes to foreign governments to hand out as they see fit. Often that assistance is stolen outright or it goes to the politically connected in the recipient country.
Just as bad is the fact that much of what we call “foreign aid” is actually welfare for the wealthy here at home. The aid package to Israel is a very good example. According to the agreement, this $38 billion will all go to US weapons manufacturers. So the real beneficiaries are not the American people, and not even Israeli citizens. The real beneficiaries are the US military-industrial complex. Perhaps the money won’t even leave Washington – it may simply go across town, from the Fed to the Beltway bomb-makers.
While even US government aid to desperately poor countries should be opposed on moral and practical grounds, it is even harder to understand US aid to relatively rich countries. At a nominal per capita GDP of over $35,000, Israel is richer than Japan, Italy, and South Korea. Not long ago Business Insider published a report by the Institute for the Study of War showing that the Israel is the most powerful military force in the Middle East. We know they have hundreds of nuclear weapons, a sophisticated air force, drones, and even nuclear weapons-equipped submarines.
So why is the US giving a rich and incredibly well-armed country a record amount of military aid? Part of it is that the US government believes it can coerce Israel to do Washington’s bidding in the Middle East. History shows that this is a foolish pipe dream. If anything, US aid subsidizes Israeli human rights abuses in Gaza and elsewhere.
Another reason is a very powerful lobby in Washington, AIPAC, that pressures Members of Congress to focus on Israel’s interests instead of US interests. Members of Congress should look at our economy, with effectively zero interest rates, an anemic non-recovery from the 2008 crash, historically low participation in the work force, and inflation eroding the value of the dollar and conclude that this might not be the best time to start handing out billions of dollars in foreign aid. Unfortunately most Members of Congress find it impossible to say no to special interest groups like AIPAC.
Here’s a better aid package for Israel: free trade, travel, friendly relations, and no entangling alliances. Israel should be free to pursue its national interests and we should be free to pursue ours. If individual Americans feel compelled to provide assistance to Israel or any other country or cause overseas they should be allowed. But the rest of us should not be forced to do so. Trade, not aid.
To counteract the $100 billion+ we send to Iran?
I could consider a Libertarian approach of not giving to any of them, but giving Israel a green light to take care of business hard and quickly.
Although Paul always takes special care to add that he's against ALL foreign aid, for some reason only the aid to Israel makes him angry enough to write columns.
Over the same time period as the Israeli deal (10 years), we'll be giving 15 billion to Egypt, 11 billion to Afghanistan, 10 billion to Jordan, and 9 billion to Pakistan, totaling 45 billion. That's right, 45 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars to Moslem regimes, most of which are virulently anti-American. But Mr. Paul only brings up THAT topic in a very off-hand manner when writing about his outrage about the aid to Israel. Strange how that is.
I thought we were sending that to Boeing, Lockheed, etc., laundering it through Israel. The military-industrial complex is alive and well. At least we can count on the Israelis to put the hardware to good use.
For a much better reason than for what’s being sent to unplanned parenthood.
So in essence government subsidized employees to generate a product destined for another country that is in effect a hand out?
I love every dollar going to Israel if only to continue irritating every bloody Muslim and Jihadist who uniformly hate the very existence of Israel. When you have Muslim countries praying to their Satan god to help them destroy Israel I say up the aid to Israel.
So shut up Paul.
Why are we sending $150B to terrorist Iran?
I guess Ron Paul the idiot is not aware that they are surrounded by Hostiles on all sides. "Rich" is a relative thing. Relative to their enemies, they can use all the help they can get.
I would find this line of argument more persuasive if Israel didn't get mentioned until like country number 37 or something.
Being that the focus is on Israel instead of the other nations we subsidize (such as Germany) then I can only conclude the concern is more about hating Israel than it is about money.
Ron, that's 3.8 Billion per year. It's a drop in the bucket of piss we give to the rest of the world. Most is military aid which will go to providing jobs here in the military industrial complex. Using the ten year figure and disregarding the rest of the world comes down to Jew baiting. That's your libertarian elite talking.
Because we have a treaty with them that we can’t give aid to certain Muslim nations without matching it for Israel.
Obama tried like hell to work around that, but he couldn’t legally do it.
Even if they didn’t need/want the aid, we had to give it to them if Obama wanted to give to his buddies in the Middle East.
SUCK IT, OBAMA.
“America is broke , we shouldn’t be giving money to any country .”
Look up Israeli inventions and innovation over the last 50 years. Israel is the R&D epicenter of the world. 38 billion is peanuts.
See my post #51.
If the US doesn’t want to give to Israel, they can easily stop giving... if they also stop giving to certain Islamic nations.
See post 51
If Ron Paul doesn’t know that our treaty agreement with Israel is based on aid that we give to Muslim nations, then he needs to shut up until he’s educated.
You don’t want to give to Israel? Fine. The only way to do that is to shut down aid to the rest of the Middle East.
America is broke , we shouldn’t be giving money to any country.
DiogenesLamp: I would find this line of argument more persuasive if Israel didn't get mentioned until like country number 37 or something.
I’m ambivalent on this but I do agree we have to support Israel given they share our humanity
How much cash is debatable
I’m not in favor of a blank check
How much do we give their enemies is a better Question
However I’d take Netanyahu as our first Jewish president any day if he could run
More importantly, why are we building Mexico a wall... on their southern border.
This is an abstract conceptual framework that is an over-generalization, and thus is an incorrect subjective map of the world. It is a false premise which invalidates his conclusions. Foreign aid is a useful way to get some countries to do what we want them to do rather than using force.
This leaves us to conclude that Ron PaleoPaulie, the Galveston poster boy for embarrassing insanity, has a problem with an average of $3.8 billion per year going to Jews and Jews who believe in standing up to OUR nation's enemies as well as of their nation.
If the Iranian mullahs and Islamolunatics generally were to accomplish their stated purpose of driving all Israeli Jews into the sea, and/or killing all Jews, PaleoPaulie would like his Stormfront enthusiasts, regard it as "progress."
It is good that this despicable pantywaist is gone permanently from our politics. It helps us to know the sheer joy that Brits must have felt Brits when their nation's embarrassing cowardly prime minister Neville Chamberlain was dumped by Winston Churchill.
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