[quote=AK]Hey, that foreign aid budget keeps Pakistan afloat … otherwise their nukes fall into the hands of even bigger nutjobs. They’re officially “too big to fail” now.
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I’d much prefer that we spent an extra $50 billion a year on foreign spending to get what we want instead of spending many times that to fight foreign wars.

Think what might happen if we told Pakistan that we would send them $5 billion in cold hard cash the day after they sent us clearly identifiable key body parts of Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawhari, but we would cut the rest of our 2009 aid to them by 25%. I bet all that “it’s so difficult for us to have any influence in these lawless provinces where they are hiding” stuff would mean nothing.

After that’s done, agree to pay them more cold hard cash for more actual and objectively measurable results on the ground. Like drops in the number of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, and replacement of Wahhabi youth training camps with good quality real schools for the 21st century. Let them argue amongst themselves about how hard it is – just pay on a published formula based solely on objective results, not effort.

Foreign aid could be very powerful, if directed ruthlessly to what we really want done. Of course, I suspect that instead a lot of it will flow to support the “Middle East peace process”. A total waste of our time and money.