{"id":11189,"date":"2011-08-24T06:59:33","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T14:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=11189"},"modified":"2011-08-24T06:59:33","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T14:59:33","slug":"sen-graham-is-lying-about-foreign-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/24\/sen-graham-is-lying-about-foreign-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Graham is Lying About Foreign Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/2011\/08\/23\/121656\/sc-sen-graham-us-should-spend.html\">McClatchy<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Monday called on the U.S. government to send more money to Middle East countries in turmoil to push them toward democracy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cForeign aid is a very complicated, controversial topic, particularly when you\u2019re broke. But &#8230; it is good for the American people and the American government to reach out and help those who live in peace with us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFind me an example where two democracies went to war,\u201d he added. \u201cDemocracies have a way, through the rule of law, of working out their problems.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amconmag.com\/blog\/exporting-tyranny-through-foreign-aid\/\">Me<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Immediately after World War II, \u201cthe Defense Department, the CIA, the State Department, and USAID provided assistance to police and internal security forces in key strategic regions,\u201d said a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rand.org\/pubs\/monographs\/2006\/RAND_MG550.pdf\">2006 RAND Corporation report<\/a>. The flow of aid to successive regimes in the Middle East has been consistent ever since.<\/p>\n<p>In a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fas.org\/sgp\/crs\/mideast\/RL32260.pdf\">June 2010 report for the Congressional Research Service<\/a>, Jeremy Sharp writes that, in addition counterterrorism, aid to Middle East regimes is an attempt to \u201cencourage peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors,\u201d and serves for \u201cthe protection of vital petroleum supplies.\u201d This latter justification was, of course, understood by early post-war national security planners. As a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gwu.edu\/~nsarchiv\/NSAEBB\/NSAEBB78\/propaganda%20127.pdf\">Top Secret National Security Council briefing<\/a>\u00a0put it in 1954, \u201cthe Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,\u201d as it \u201ccontains the greatest petroleum resources in the world\u201d as well as \u201cessential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Continued and in some cases increased foreign assistance after the September 11<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0attacks had the benefit of giving \u201cthe United States leverage on key foreign policy issues, since it can make assistance contingent on cooperation,\u201d says the RAND report. But these assistance programs \u201ccan have a negative effect on democratic development by strengthening a state\u2019s capacity for repression\u201d and, as one study concluded \u201c<strong>the more foreign police aid given [to repressive states], the more brutal and less democratic the police institutions and their governments become<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>McClatchy: U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Monday called on the U.S. government to send more money to Middle East countries in turmoil to push them toward democracy. \u201cForeign aid is a very complicated, controversial topic, particularly when you\u2019re broke. But &#8230; it is good for the American people and the American government to reach out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11190,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11189\/revisions\/11190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11189"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}