Posted by
KsReaganite on Wednesday, October 07, 2009 8:09:08 PM
Today the President met with his national security team about Pakistan, in the aftermath of last week’s passage into law of the Pakistan Aid Act, which commits millions to the Pakistani regime. A brainchild of Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and Richard Lugar, the law gives the President-who spent time in his childhood and in his youth in Pakistan-broad authority to disburse American taxpayer money to Pakistan to help the country combat terrorism. While some conditions are attached, by and large, they are less severe than in the past, and still allow the President to ignore them citing ‘national interest’. So far, so good.
Except that Pakistan has had a poor history of using American money for noble purposes. Mostly such aid has been used, as successive CBO reports point out, to prop up the domestic priorities, including subsidies to politicians and drug lords, of the men in power. And while Pakistan and its Washington friends talk about using the aid to do important social uplift work, they fail to mention the stark truth about Pakistan’s abiding shame when it comes to doing humanitarian work: for thirty eight years, hundreds of thousands of Pakistan’s own citizens-now well into their third generation-have languished in squalid refugee camps in impoverished Bangladesh while Pakistan squandered billions of American aid dollars. How can America expect the Pakistani regime to do anything uplifting with our dollars when they have purposely and deliberately let their own citizens rot in camps for generations?
At the very least, conservatives should demand that Pakistan take back its own citizens rotting in foreign lands before embarking on other elaborate projects for social uplift.