The Terrorist Stimulus Plan

I wish I could take credit for coming up with that title, but the honor goes to Exurban Jon with his article, "Obama announces Terrorist Stimulus Plan." I often criticize President Obama for his failure to act in accord with U.S. interests, and this is a prime example. Here's the key part of the post.

Let me get this straight. Our economy has cratered. Unemployment is nearly 10 percent. The national debt is expected to exceed our gross national product by next year. And we're giving $400,000,000 to our mortal enemies in Gaza?

$400,000,000 to the Hamas-led death cult allied with Iran and Syria? $400,000,000 to the people who celebrated the destruction of the twin towers? $400,000,000 to rain thousands more rockets upon Israeli women and children?

He forgot to mention a couple of other things. We are still involved in two wars, both of which involve major nation-building projects. Afghanistan in particular has no end in sight, and is absorbing more and more resources with not a whole lot of results to show for it. We have no idea what happens to more than 50% of the money we give to that country. No, I'm not exaggerating. Yet somehow we can scrape up 400 million dollars to give to people that hate us.

I know I've posted about this issue recently, but the sheer stupidity of such an aid program is almost beyond belief. We are not going to be able to bribe the Palestinians into being our friends. Are there individual Palestinians deserving of aid, and basically friendly toward the U.S.? Yes, there are. But the Palestinian people as a whole are hostile to the U.S. Rightly or wrongly, they regard Israel as their mortal enemy. The U.S. is Israel's greatest ally and supporter. The Palestinian territories may be infested with fanatical, terrorist-loving people who believe all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories, but even Palestinians are not ignorant enough to think that the U.S. puts their interests ahead of Israel's, or that this aid is anything more than a bribe, and a sop to the U.S.'s Islamic allies in the region. We could give untold billions to the Palestinians, but unless we abandon Israel they are not going to be our friends. They will spit in the face of our gifts, and see only the arms and support we provide to Israel.

There are some situations in foreign policy where it makes sense to play both sides. The Israeli-Palestinian situation is not one of them. The divisions are so clear & sharp between the sides, that there is little room for the U.S. to maneuver. For years now we've tried to pretend that we can be some sort of honest broker in the region, mediating between the two parties, and for the most part we've gotten nowhere. No one is fooled by our honest broker pose. By adopting such a position, and by trying to be even-handed, we gain nothing. We waste our time and resources, we damage our alliance with Israel, and we appear weak and vacillating to our enemies. When we aren't rewarding the Palestinians for their support of terrorism and our enemies, we are encouraging them to believe that if they continue holding out, they might achieve some of their ludicrous demands. Funding our enemies is not only a stupid waste of resources we can't afford, but it achieves nothing.  What's next, an aid program for the Taliban?