Not One Thin Dime - Enough is Enough

"Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others." -- Alexander Hamilton

Not One Thin Dime – Enough is Enough

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
September 16, 2012

The Arab Spring has clearly morphed into the winter of our discontent.

This is not going to be a political screed as both major parties are complicit here. Both the Democrats and the Republicans continue doling out money like Halloween treats to countries far and wide who neither appreciate the assistance nor defend to their own people the veracity of its importance.

If the past week of tragedy, terror, and tumult in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, and Bangladesh have not driven home the message that no amount of money or foreign aid will appease the savages that run amok in the name of a faith that, to all evidence, is clearly no religion of peace, then it is time to raise the financial and cultural white flags.

For all his insanity and inanities over the years, US Rep. Ron Paul (?-TX) actually got this one correct: make foreign countries earn the generous largesse provided by the United States. All countries should start at zero dollars and let them make their case before Congress and the State Department for any aid they think they deserve.

Paul is not alone as Texas Governor Rick Perry often said during his failed campaign to secure the GOP nod, “My foreign aid budget… is gonna start at zero dollars.” (Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec. 5-12, 2011, p. 42)

One would think members of Congress would be tripping all over themselves for the chance to sponsor such budget cutting legislation, especially when it would not involve eliminating any precious entitlements of which Democrats are so fond, or any Republican-sponsored tax cuts.

Use Ross Perot-style charts if it will help, but make no mistake, reprobate nations will not see one thin dime of American dollars, nor will nations that support those rogue miscreants. Nor should they. They don’t like the United States and they are not going to like the United States just because they are given financial aid. Or worse, military aid that such nations ultimately turn against their donors. Is the US buying intelligence? If so, how reliable could the intelligence be when soldiers trained by the US become insurgents, turning those weapons against those who trained those troops?

“We’re losing soldiers in Afghanistan to rogue forces – this is what Israel goes through every day,” said Douglas Brinkley, Rice University professor and presidential historian. “We cannot count on host countries protecting our property,” said Brinkley. “We have to do it ourselves.” (American embassies overseas are American property.)

Sanctions certainly have not worked against countries like Iran, as they continue to press forward with their nuclear warfare designs in an effort to fulfill their promise of eradicating Israel from the map.

There is a “moment of truth coming on Iran,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). The Middle East wants US leadership and the US must show strength and leadership, Lieberman continued, adding that “we either accept a nuclear Iran or act militarily. We have to deal with Iran in a very tough way.”

It is not only foolish to capitulate, hand-wring, supplicate, or genuflect to and before people who neither like nor respect the United States, it has proven deadly, witness the murder of an American ambassador and three of his colleagues this week alone.

Appeasement did not work for British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 with Hitler, and today the United States is dealing with an enemy with more patience, more people (over one billion), better intelligence, technology, and firepower than the Nazis could ever have fathomed.

This is not the Cold War fought against the former Soviet Union, flexing muscles and backing down a la the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 because the United States was dealing with an enemy who also wanted to live. That was a battle for spheres of influence between capitalism and democracy versus communism – a battle of differing political and economic philosophies. The Domino Theory was all the rage.

Such politics and economics are subject to metamorphosis over time. How many strident communist nations still exist? Cuba? Angola? North Korea? Anyone looking to move to any of those despotic locales anytime soon? Even China is moving, ever so slowly, toward a pseudo-capitalism. The United States does business with Vietnam these days, which, while objectionable, is a matter for another column.

Today’s “dominos” will not be bought off with aid – financial, military or otherwise.

Eradicating this problem is simple. Pull all American servicemen and women from these rogue nations. Encourage all students and tourists to return home to the United States as quickly as possible. Advise American citizens not to visit or conduct business with rogue nations or the nations supporting the enemies of the United States. Hit them where they will feel it – in their economies. Yes, that includes any oil producing countries as well. Further, freeze any governmental assets miscreant countries have in the United States.

The current war, and it is a war, has been waged by a group of savage fanatics and zealots blindly following religious dicta and dogma commanding its adherents to kill so-called infidels such as Jews and Christians, commanding that female adulterers be put to death, commanding that homosexuals be put to death, that converts away from this venal faith be put to death. Their treatment of women is abominable at best.

The savages who make headlines on a daily basis burning American flags, attacking embassies, murdering innocent Americans, chanting death to Israel, death to America, are now clamoring “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.” (www.drudge.com)

Terrorists only understand fear and violence, and they should be met with the same if not worse. They kill four Americans, the US strikes back by killing 4,000 of their people. This may sound harsh to American sensibilities and the media would lose their minds over such a plan of attack, but fire must be fought with fire as the alternatives have proven a catastrophic failure.

Terrorists need only be accurate once. “Our vigilance has to be every day,” said Brinkley.

In order to be acutely vigilant, the United States needs deft leadership and the mechanisms in which to defend the nation and its people both at home and abroad.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.