http://patriotpost.us/opinion/ken-blackwell/2011/05/05/cut-us-funding-for-os amas-mourners/
Cut U.S. Funding for Osama's Mourners By Ken Blackwell (Archive <http://patriotpost.us/opinion/ken-blackwell/> ) . Thursday, May 5, 2011 Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that runs Gaza, is mourning the death of Osama bin Laden. He is a "martyr" to these jihadists. And Hamas has just concluded a pact with the so-called Palestinian Authority (PA), or Fatah, the group that the U.S. recognizes and to whom we give lavish foreign aid. We are currently giving $600 million to the so-called Palestinian Authority. Fatah has held an increasingly precarious control over much of the West Bank of the Jordan River since 1988. It was then that the U.S. brokered a deal in which the PLO morphed into the Palestinian Authority (PA), promised to give up terrorism, and promised to recognize Israel's right to exist. Many of us never thought the PLO would keep any of those promises -- but we knew they would cash our checks and pocket as well huge sums from the European Union. All of this in the name of "peace." Among the things that the PLO has done on the West Bank is to terrorize Christian Arabs, to name public squares after suicide bombers, and to conduct an all-out Hate Israel propaganda campaign in their schools, universities, and controlled media. Good faith? Arafat instigated yet another intifada against Israel when he got 98% of his territorial demands met and not 100%. Intifadas are uprisings characterized by stone-throwing Palestinian youths confronting Israeli troops. The visuals are great for their propaganda purposes. Israeli soldiers in armored personnel carriers or tanks are shown confronting a hail of stones. But less often noted in the leftist media -- BBC, CNN, Reuters, AFP -- is that these young warriors of the intifada are deadly accurate. Their stones have been a deadly form of action in that region since biblical times. Now, the PLO has made a pact with Hamas, their supposed rivals who control the Gaza Strip. For a decade, Hamas and Fatah have been fighting each other. Hamas is openly committed to the eradication of Israel. All maps of the Mideast produced by Hamas show Arab lands with no Jewish state -- what they call the Zionist Entity -- at all. But Fatah's maps likewise show no Israel. The somber news of the Fatah-Hamas deal came out of -- Cairo. Apparently, the post-Mubarak government is being strongly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is merely the Palestinian branch of the MB. So this is the "Arab Spring" we've heard so much about? Look at the map of Israel. You can still find it on our maps. With Hamas firmly in control in Gaza, Israel's main population centers are now within easy range of their missile fire. Add to the threat of Hamas, Fatah in the West Bank, and you see Israelis caught in a lethal crossfire. The Israeli government's response to these menacing moves was sober and restrained: "The Palestinian Authority (Fatah) must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas." Our U.S. response was terribly weak: "The United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace. Hamas, however, is a terrorist organization which targets civilians." It's time to put teeth into U.S. policy. Yasser Arafat was the man who invented airline hijacking for terror purposes. He murdered Americans. It was never a good idea to trust his word or to trust any organization formed by him. We have gotten nothing for the billions we have showered on him and his corrupt and murderous cronies. What we see with the Hamas-Fatah rapprochement is merely the open and brazen acknowledgment of what has always been the case: Both Hamas and Fatah are terrorist organizations. Only now has Fatah dropped its mask. Secretary Clinton urged us to send Fatah another $160 million on top of the $600 million. Here's a fine candidate for cuts. Let's cut off all U.S. support to these organizations. And we should press our European allies to do the same. It's time to follow up the brave actions of our U.S. Navy SEALs with brave action in the diplomatic arena I'd second cutting off any and all funding to bin Ladens compatriots and supporters, but that's just the tip of the "sanity" spear. We provide billions annually to countries all across the globe in the age old political game of trying to buy international acceptance and influence, which seems to have in most cases, been pretty ineffectual. Several questions come to mind about such policies: 1.By what real and legal authority does the government have the authority to give away our tax dollars? This amounts to a parallel of unions giving collected union dues funding to politically support their chosen candidates regardless of what the individual members would choose to support. Though unions are legally allowed to do so, is our government legally empowered to do this with our $$ on an international scale? 2. Did the state dept. and the executive branch who typically ask for these funds and the congress who then votes to appropriate them not get the memo about us not only being broke, but spending borrowed $$ just to run the day to day implementation of our national policies? With every argument I hear against defunding these international give aways always ending with the shop worn "foreign aid dollars are only a drop in the bucket of our national budget" the logical side of me is similarly reminded that with enough of such "drops in the bucket", the bucket still gets filled. Watching a slow drip in your kitchen looks harmless enough but the reality is it can easily add up to 5 gallons per day. How many more buckets of our national budget funds are we willing to keep pouring across the international landscape? The question takes on a whole new impact once one considers that up to 40% of the cost of these buckets is from borrowed money [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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