Post #2: “would like the US to give money to zero foreign countries.”
Questions our spending on foreign, military, humanitarian aid. You attacked that idea.
Sure appears like you have a problem with questioning our foreign aid policies which are basically the wild West for our buerocrats and politicians (do whatever you want). Imagine you not only have the power to do what you want, but you can keep it secret from those people paying for it and whom you represent! Imagine many people don’t care!!!
Before long, you have the US tax payer paying for condoms and training on their proper use to sub Saharan African men. What percent of the American tax base would support that crap if they knew and had a choice in that matter?
This is the sort of crap that shapes foreign aid:
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/29condoms.html and it’s been going on F o r e v e r (why I picked a 2006 article). You have the CIA paying for whores, booze, buying grandiose gifts for people they want to buy with dark funds (literally cash and no ledger), but sometimes they get bit out of hand themselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Foggo
It’s really simple. When if comes to foreign aid, there are niches where there is secrecy, a lack of rules, no accounting or little of it... so shady things happen. It’s not always so obvious as having the tax payer pay for whores and booze while some senior folks have poker games...
Most often it’s more subtle or caused by having a 50 meter goal which causes you to lose track of the 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 meter targets. Reagan for example was faced with a Soviet threat, and in his time, feeding the Wahabist movement, supporting folks in Afghanistan made sense since the enemy of your enemy is your friend. But what made sense in 1984 created a beast we had to deal with later. The point being, without a framework of rules that take into consideration things like our long term interests and certain values, without transparency and accounting, you end up walking down the road of good intentions with bad long term results.
“ Questions our spending on foreign, military, humanitarian aid. You attacked that idea.”
No.
I was addressing thread disruption.
“ Questions our spending on foreign, military, humanitarian aid. You attacked that idea.”
You’re barking up the wrong tree. In post 12 I even wrote this:
“ I don’t even necessarily disagree we shouldn’t give any foreign aid, but you’re bringing it up just to disrupt the thread and avoid the topic.”