"Please Don't Feed The Jihad"

     There are many days that I sit with my chin resting on my fist and ponder deep thoughts.  Today as I read the news, and took in the words and pictures about the devastating floods that have hit Pakistan.  I cant imagine trying to survive out in the open, with no shelter, the threat of cholera, dysentery, poisonous snakes.  But like most people, I find it extremely easy to say "oh how terrible" and turn the page.  It's just something that happens in a country filled with little brown people.

     This time however, what I thought about was here is this Islamic country, who has been called our greatest ally in the war on terror, teeming with people who only see the bad things America does. What would happen if we showed up and helped.  I mean really helped.  Spend hundreds of millions on food, water purification, electricity generation, engineers, agriculture.  I mean show up and kick that disasters ass old school Berlin Airlift style.  Show the people of Pakistan and the rest of the Islamic world what it means to be an ally of the United States of America.  No greater friend, no worse enemy.

     But no, alas.  What we will do is offer some financial aid to the Red Crescent and International Red Cross, maybe give some direct aid to the Pakistani government.  People will continue to suffer and the hate for America will continue to fester.  American politicians will continue to waste money on owl pellet study grants and subsidizing producers to grow corn as a fuel and driving the price of food up.  Would that money not be better spent to help a strategic partner stave off mass misery? 

     I am a self proclaimed fiscal conservative.  I left the Republican party primarily because of the hand over fist spending that occurred in the first Bush term.  But this isn't a liberal "the schools are under funded so lets shovel great heaps of cash into a bottomless hole" spending.  This is investment in our future.  What if the jihadists while recruiting young men to attack America kept running into young men with the attitude "why would I want to attack America?  You mean the America who put a roof over my head and helped pull us though a really bad time?"  On a scale of effectiveness in reducing terror attacks against the US, this would be money so much better spent than billions that we pour into Brown and Root's pockets to provide services for troops and contractors in Iraq. 

     I am just tired of having to go back to the Normandy landings to provide an example of something selfless we have done for the rest of the world.

DOB 7/1/2007