Category Archives: International affairs
Export-Import Bank need to end.
Giving money to Egypt is actually welfare for rich corporations
Planet Money reported recently that the $1.3 billion in military aid that we send to Egypt every year is being wasted. All of the money we give them is to buy military equipment from U.S. manufacturers. Much of what they buy is duplicative and excessive for the Egyptian military and is simply being stored in crates. The primary reason that this continues is that U.S. manufacturers lobby Congress for it to continue, and Congressmen and Senators want to keep the jobs and money flowing into their States.
Listen to the audio report at this link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/23/214928040/episode-482-why-the-u-s-keeps-sending-weapons-to-egypt
No help for Syria?
Governments should have no more power than individuals. Morally proper governments are created by groups of sovereign individuals who voluntarily band together to protect themselves from those who would use force or fraud to take their lives, liberty or property. What is our (your) moral responsibility to help those who are being slaughtered by their own government? Half way around the world? In Syria?
Individuals can decide for themselves whether or not they want to assist financially or personally in the fight against any given oppressors. But governments, which are representatives of all of the people, should not enter into war or other foreign conflicts based on the judgement of a simple majority of the people, or upon the directive of a single elected official – namely, the President of the United States.
That is why our Constitution grants the power to declare war only to the Congress. Both houses of Congress, the House and the Senate, must approve any declaration of war. If there is truly an imminent threat to the people of the U.S., then approval by Congress should be fairly easy. When the threat to the citizens of the U.S. is not clear, then it should be difficult for the U.S., and the President, to declare war.
It is a terrible thing that is happening in Syria, but the United States is not threatened in any way by the their civil war. Even if we assume that the Assad regime initiated the chemical weapons strike against its own people, that is not enough reason for the U.S., unilaterally, to become involved in the conflict. If the U.N. follows agreed upon processes and decides that military intervention is appropriate, then the U.S. should be part of an international force to stop the use of chemical weapons.