Web Opinion by Todd Beezley

Greasing Dirty Palms

 

All those who are sick and tired of seeing your tax dollars spent to grease the dirty palms of foreigners who hate us…raise both hands.

With all those arms in the air out there, it looks like a revival…which is precisely what we need in this country on more than one front. For one thing, it’s time to cast off our illusions and wake up to the fact that for all of our good intentions, the United States is not loved for our largesse throughout the world.

It’s hated.

Jim Tobin of the Illinois Libertarian Party wrote an interesting piece this week in which he pointed out how many billions of our tax dollars have been donated in foreign aid throughout the Middle East, each year. While Israel has received up to three billion dollars, Muslim nations and entities including Egypt, the Palestinians and Afghanistan raked in a combined similar amount.

What we have in return for our seemingly bottomless pockets is a live shooting war in Central Asia and the Middle East poised to follow in a big way.

We recently read that Israel would not protest the cutting off of all non-military foreign aid from the United States and we suspect the volume of tax dollars being directed there to radically drop under the next budget. That should solve a major part of the problem.

The Muslim world, however, does not appear as easily weaned. Less than six months ago, the U.S. was awarding the Taliban government of Afghanistan 200 million dollars, much of it, allegedly, as a thank you for that regime’s decision to order an end to the cultivation of heroin poppies. The money machines at the Treasury must really be working overtime, now that we’ve bribed the four major tribal leaders of Afghanistan with billions of dollars just to sit down at the table in Germany and work out a power-sharing agreement.

How long will this coalition of convenience last? I suspect things will go south in a hurry, once the Swiss bank accounts of the major parties are fully funded. They may wait a few years until sufficient weaponry has reentered the country, so that the next round of civil war won’t have to be fought with rocks and scimitars. Once the parties have had a chance to relax, regroup and reload, I fear history will repeat itself. Old hatreds die hard.

A valuable lesson can be learned here. When two or more parties have a personal stake in the destruction of each other, money cannot buy peace. It can only buy time.

We’ve seen this again and again in the Middle East. Even the allure of a Palestinian state, and the misdirection of millions of U.S. tax dollars into the hands of its corrupt leadership has not been enough to prevent limitless rounds of terrorist activity in Israel. No, these dogs prefer to bite the hand that fed them…funneling their hatred into the passenger compartments of 757’s and ramming it like a dagger with multiple thrusts into the financial and military nerve centers of America.

This week, President Bush announced the Treasury Department had acted to close down the U.S.-based financial accounts of the Holyland Charitable Foundation, an organization believed to be diverting substantial sums to Muslim terror groups. Although the funds underwriting this organization were collected primarily in donations from private individuals living in America, the action still speaks volumes about the nature of how the world works.

Money is collected for what appears to be the noblest of intentions and is squandered, instead, destroying the lives of innocent others.

Tough love must say, "Enough." We may not be able to prevent you from killing each other, but we’re not going to give you the weaponry and money to do it.

One of my favorite books of the 1960’s was eventually morphed into a hilarious Peter Sellers’ comedy, "The Mouse that Roared." In it, a poverty-stricken nation, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, no larger in size than Europe’s tiny Lichtenstein, decides to declare war on the United States for the sole purpose of quickly losing. The defeated country would then be transformed into a booming, prosperous land by appealing to the guilt-ridden American victors for foreign aid.

Sometimes, the truth makes you laugh. Sometimes, it can only make you cry.

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