Pakistan's and the $20 billion +


"Business as usual will not be there," Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told CNN when asked if ties with the United States would continue. "We have to have something bigger so as to satisfy my nation… Pakistan shut down NATO supply routes into Afghanistan in retaliation for the weekend shooting incident, the worst of its kind since Islamabad allied itself with Washington in 2001.” (Reuters, Nov. 28, 2011)

Oh, ye, of small ears and big hands and minute memory!

“The U.S. gave $20.7 billion in military and economic development aid to Pakistan from fiscal 2002 through fiscal 2011, according to a new report that FOX Business has obtained that was issued by specialists in South Asian Affairs for the Congressional Research Service [CRS] to Congress on May 6.” The U.S. gave Pakistan $14.2 billion in total military related aid, $8.9 billion of which came out of the Pentagon’s budget (in a footnote CRS says this is technically not foreign assistance, its "is Pentagon funding to reimburse Pakistan for its support of U.S. military operations; it is technically not foreign assistance.") Out of that $14.2 billion, other expenditures were for things like counterinsurgency and financial support for its military. 

Here is another kick in the teeth (Osama ben Ladin living serenely in Paskistan was another). We have a snake by the tail and no one seems to recognize it. We have quit demanding something of value for our money. Why should any country consider us a force to be reckoned with if we keep doling out cash for little return on investment?

I find this fiasco intolerable. The U.S. should have put a pinching pressure on Pakistan the instant our troops killed OBL, and the instant (2008 to be exact) they found OBL, they should have turned off the faucet of money to Pakistan until “the people of that nation” realized just how much they depended upon us American tax payers. The amount of money we have given Pakistan is small compared to the $5 trillion added to the deficit, but as I learned years ago pennies add up and soon you have a dollar, and $5 can make or break a budget, especially if you are minus $5 to pay the electric bill.

If we continue in this vein, we will be embalmed without any blood flow to the brain. That means we’ll be brain dead, and I think that has been the situation in Washington for at least 3 years.

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