Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Foreign aid to Egypt

OUR EGYPTIAN "ALLY": The United States has mistaken priorities, I'm ashamed to say. We dole out foreign aid carelessly. Perhaps the most blatant example is the $2 billion a year we give to Egypt. Egypt, if you don't know, is under the rule of a pseudo-military dictatorship in the name of the "war on terrorism." The Egyptian government persecutes homosexuals, women, non-Muslims, pretty much everyone. There isn't much freedom of press; in fact, the press is all government-controlled and takes care to accuse Jews of all kinds of evil. Some Egyptian government dailies rival Der Sturmer in the horrible anti-Semitism they spew. Yet we still give $2B a year.

This story is also disturbing. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's unelected president, held a ceremony where he yelled at Israel and decorated Muammar Gadhafi. That's good old Colonel Gadhafi, the one who went American-killing throughout the 1980s. He's the guy who proposed "Isratine" a few months ago--the merging of Israel and Palestine into one happy state. Gadhafi is also actively seeking chemical weapons--I posted about this in June and will link to the earlier post soon--as well as nuclear and biological weapons. He's priming to terrorize and kill. And Mubarak embraces him and decorates him with a high Egyptian military medal. What a friend we have over there. I have a feeling our money is accomplishing very little.