Of course, the foreign aid “investment” in foreign dictators around the world has often led American politicians and pontificators to cling to the dictators long after the people of their countries have any use for them. Such has been the case with the Obama-Biden administration and the Mubarak regime in Egypt. A week after massive Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square made worldwide headlines, Secretary of State Clinton and Vice President Biden told Americans they were sticking with the dictator. “I would not refer to him as a dictator,” Biden said on PBS’ NewsHour on January 27. Meanwhile, Clinton told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press that “President Mubarak and his government have been an important partner to the United States” and that the government was exercising “restraint” in its dealings with the demonstrators, even as beatings, shootings, and murders mounted. But reality did eventually set in. On February 6, long after it became obvious that a transition of power from Mubarak was going to happen anyway, President Obama finally told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly about Mubarak, “What we’ve said is you’ve got to lead to a transition now.”
That’s not to say the Obama administration has allowed too much reality to enter the public debate. The Obama administration’s immediate plans include ramping up foreign aid giveaways. The State Department’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review calls for creation of a host of new job positions and agencies, including “creating an Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights” and a “Coordinator for Cyber Issues,” establishing “a Bureau of Policy, Planning, and Learning” and a “Bureau for Counterterrorism,” and appointing “a Global Food Security Coordinator” and “a new Bureau for Energy Resources.” The phrases “abolish” and “phase out” for other agencies or officers already tasked with similar foreign aid and foreign manipulation appear nowhere in the document.
Considering the bloody history of foreign aid, and the current prospects of some major political blow-back caused by U.S. government past backing of dictators with foreign aid money, Senator Rand Paul may have expressed only part of the problem with foreign aid. Americans are paying the monetary cost of foreign aid out of their wallets, but they are also paying another — higher — cost for the ill-will that our foreign aid has created for America abroad. Even if the federal government were enjoying an embarrassing budget surplus, as it did during much of the 19th century, Americans still couldn’t afford the cost of foreign aid.
