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The Spectacle Blog
US interests in the Southeastern Mediterranean seem pretty clear: We should be empowering secular democratic political actors in Egypt to compete in the future with the currently ascendent Islamists, and meanwhile maintaining strong ties with Israel — our only truly stable ally in the region — to deter belligerence by actors within Egypt who might be itching to tear up the Camp David Accords. More specifically:
1. Withhold aid to Egypt’s military government until they reverse course on repression of organizations like the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which train activists in the nuts and bolts of political organization;
2. Maintain support for said organizations;
3. Strengthen military ties with Israel;
4. Avoid diplomatic friction with Israel.
In the budget proposal released Monday, the Obama administration proposes to do the opposite of all of these things.
1. As Jen Rubin notes,
[T]he administration has threatened a cut off of aid to Egypt if the junta goes ahead with prosecution of NGO’s personnel including some Americans. But - you guessed it - the administration’s budget calls for $1.3 billion in military assistance to Egypt. Might the administration have put that on hold as an incentive for the Egyptians to dismiss the changes? Apparently, not.
There are efforts on Capitol Hill to move on this front, including the amendment Rand Paul wants added to the Highway Bill, which is currently stalled over this issue; the administration’s position no doubt helps explain Senate Democrats’ resistence.
2. Democracy-promotion — including the National Endowment for Democracy, which funds the NDI and IRI — takes a cut:
Under Obama’s proposal, released Monday, the State Department’s Democracy Fund would be cut by 21 percent from its current $140-million appropriation, leaving it with $111 million for fiscal 2012. Subsidies for the National Endowment for Democracy, a private nonprofit that focuses on spreading democracy, would be cut by 12 percent, from $118 million to $104 million.
This is a familiar move for the Obama administration, which in its first year made major cuts to programs promoting democracy and governance in Egypt. The White House slashed those funds by 60 percent, from $50 million to $20 million, during 2009, though Congress added another $5 million in funding to the programs. Hit hardest by those cuts were civil-society programs and nongovernmental organizations, whose funding dropped 78 percent, from $32 million to $7 million.
Those cuts were backed by diplomats in Cairo, who told the White House that democracy-promotion programs harmed relations with recently-deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
To repeat this: In the two years prior to Mubarak’s fall, the Obama administration was cutting back on training Egyptian democrats. When Mubarak fell, his legacy included an Islamist movement with unmatched organizational muscle. And the White House has apparently learned nothing from this.
3. Obama’s budget cuts funding for US-Israeli missile defense programs, to the horror of the relevant House Republican leaders; Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon sent an open letter on Wednesday urging President Obama to reconsider. McKeon, at an event on Capitol Hill yesterday morning hosted by the “Defending Defense” project (a joint venture of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Foreign Policy Initiative), reiterated his objection to cutting missile defense funding. “We should be increasing it,” he added.
4. On the other hand, there is an area where the Obama administration does want to increase funding, as Adam Kredo at the excellent new Washington Free Beacon explains:
The Obama administration is clandestinely trying to resume funding a U.N. body that officially recognized the “State of Palestine.”
But members of Congress say that they won’t stand for it.
A footnote tucked into the president’s recently unveiled budget proposal reveals the administration’s intent to resume funding for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, otherwise known as UNESCO.
UNESCO caused an international firestorm last year when it accepted Palestine as a member - despite the fact that Palestine is neither a state nor a full member of the U.N.
Congress responded to UNESCO’s unwarranted intrusion into the Middle East peace process by invoking a U.S. law that prohibits funding of any international organization that recognizes a Palestinian state.
Now, however, Obama is aiming to resume UNESCO’s funding - ignoring the Palestinians’ ongoing quest to establish a state via the U.N., rather than through direct negotiations with Israel.
According to a footnote in the White House’s budget summary: “The Department of State intends to work with Congress to seek legislation that would provide authority to waive restrictions on paying the U.S. assessed contributions to UNESCO. Should the Congress pass this legislation, this funding is sufficient to cover the FY 2013 UNESCO assessment and the balance of the FY 2012 assessment.”
Kredo goes on to quote Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Joe Walsh expressing opposition.
So, to recap, the administration’s budget attaches no strings to aid to the Egyptian government that is suppressing organizations dedicated to democratic development, cuts funding for those organizations, cuts missile defense cooperation with Israel, and seeks to restore UN funding in a way that gives the Palestinians a pass on an attempted end-run around bilateral diplomacy with Israel. Do you ever get the idea that this administration doesn’t know what is and isn’t in our national interest?
View all comments (18) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by John Tabin
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/02/17/obamas-backwards-foreign-aid-p
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Eric Dondero | 2.17.12 @ 11:43AM
Hey, this should make the Ron Paulists happy. Anything that serves to prop up our Islamist enemies is a winner in the minds of the Paulists.
So, maybe Obama's making a play for the isolationist/surrendertarian vote.
Hobbes| 2.17.12 @ 11:52AM
“Not seldom it has seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.” Russell Kirk, founder of "TRADITIONAL" conservatism
sirbourbon| 2.17.12 @ 7:07PM
That's a stretch since Ron Paul votes to cut funds to all nations sice this is nothing but redistribution of America's wealth to foreign lands.
Paul's position is to remove the barriers to civilized and humane exchanges if at all possible with the nations of the world. Paul is accused falsely of maintaining an"isolationist" attitude but the real "ISOLATIONISTS" are those that shut down US embassies and cut off diplomatic relations and place war ships on the ready to lob bombs into a country like Syria. The regime in Syria has it human rights issues and the civil rioting there is not going to be resolved by taking sides with the al-Qaeda backed rebels.
UNESCO.
Ron Paul has voted to cut funding to this internationalist and socialistic leach.
UNESCO history
President Reagan cancelled U.S. membership in UNESCO in 1984. President George W. Bush put the U.S. back in the organization, and resumed funding it in 2002. UNESCO thanked Mr. Bush in a self-indicting way by awarding Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez its annual Marti Award for 2005 at a celebration in Cuba!
President Obama wants authority to waive the prohibition against funding UNESCO, a move that would have to be approved by Congress.
UNESCO has been a major part of the UN's operations from the earliest days of the world body that was founded in 1945. Its major architects were two American communists, Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss. The organization's founding director general, Julian Huxley, didn't hide its purpose when he stated that UNESCO would "stress the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world political organization."
Ron Paul understands that sovereignty is a key feature to Israel and he has supported them even when amajority in congress has condemned Israel! Israel's strike at the Osirak nuke cite in Iraq in 1994 puts Paul on Israel's side. http://www.liquida.com/article.....r-weapons/
Clint| 2.18.12 @ 7:48AM
Do Your Homework, Israel Firster Smear Bund Propaganda Scum, Dondero-Rittberg
Dr.Ron Paul,
“As the President prepares to send even more support to Egypt, we should
be reminded that it was our foreign aid that helped Mubarak retain power
to repress his people in the first place. Now we have to deal with the
consequences of those decisions, yet we keep repeating the same mistakes.
“I am not the only one who can see the absurdities of our foreign
policy. We give $3 billion to Israel and $12 billion to her enemies.
Most Americans know that makes no sense.
“We need to come to our senses, trade with our friends in the Middle
East (both Arab and Israeli), clean up our own economic mess so we set a
good example, and allow them to work out their own conflicts.”
The Tea Party Rebellion Heads To A Brokered Convention.
Hobbes| 2.17.12 @ 11:49AM
We like to think of ourselves as traditional conservatives...who, unlike you Wilsonian/NeoCon Chickenhawks, think we should build democracy at home. All you people do is bitch about how America is becoming a socialist totalitarian state and in the next breath you say we need to export our form of government to the Middle East.
Hobbes| 2.17.12 @ 11:57AM
Hey Tabin, here's your Wilsonian National Endowment for Democracy at work:
http://www.theamericanconserva.....yz-legacy/
hook| 2.17.12 @ 12:53PM
Obama's policy in the Mid East is horrific, and it is hard to say that anti-Semitism plays no role. I wonder if there is ANYTHING Obama could do to lose lots of Jewish votes. I have read he still has a significant majority.
Quartermaster| 2.17.12 @ 1:04PM
American Jews have been utterly stupid politically. Orthodox Jews are OK and usually do vote well. Many of the Conservative, and certainly the pseudo-Reform Jews, are utterly despicable. Shumer, for example, falls under that head, as does Lieberman.
Jewish history since AD 70 had been characterized by the most prominent of them making themselves obnoxious and getting the run of the mill Jew punished for the sins of their leaders. In this country they have adopted an ideology that is completely inimical to their interests, yet they insist on holding it and voting accordingly.
Jews are supposed highly intelligent, but if you observe their voting patterns, then you have serious reason to question that. The majority of American Jews have rejected Torah and the morality God expected of them. It is why God turned them out of the land, and why, as Moses prophesied, they would get what we have seen throughout the history of the Christian age. As Christians we pray for them so their eyes will be opened, but as the Apostle Paul put it so well, they are blind.
hook| 2.17.12 @ 6:17PM
I think Leibermann has the right ideas on the Middle East. I would never equate him with Schumer.
Mimi| 2.17.12 @ 1:06PM
Where is Obama getting over a billion for Egypt?You would think they would have the good sense to save our children and theirs...God knows they may need it more, some of the debt he is laying on their backs is disgraceful. Never in the world has one SELF CENTERED generation burdened the next generation like this.....Unforgivable!
The SPENDING must stop! No Democrat should ever be elected or RE-ELECTED until they pledge to do this. Paul Ryan has a plan all good to go....Not until the ignorant, careless, self centered man in the Whitehouse will any HOPE take place. 300 Million of us could weep in front of this President 's FACE and EYES and he still would SPEND, SPEND, and SPEND....
Hobbes| 2.17.12 @ 2:19PM
Please. When was the last time a Republican or Republican Congress reduced spending? They are all the same, GOP and Democrats.
Occam's Tool| 2.17.12 @ 2:11PM
QM,
as I have stated before, and will state again, blow me.
Y'all should look up the concept of "buffer state." Hobbes, if you think the Islamists will stop after they have killed Israel, then you are definitely poor in mind and spirit and brutish. And now to go to Weasel Zippers, where there are fewer idiots like Hobbes and his occasional syncophant, QM (although occasionally QM writes intelligent stuff, he should stop pissing me off on this. He is not Josephus, and has no clue.)
Hobbes| 2.17.12 @ 2:25PM
The Islamists are going to kill Israel? And you call me an idiot? Didn't Israel defeat Egypt, Jordan and Syria combined in the Six Day War? But a few Islamists are going to kill Israel? And then the boogeyman is going to crawl out from under your bed and get you while you sleep. Stop being a cowardly chickenhawk. If you want to kill Arabs go over to Palestine and kill them. But don't drag the rest of us with you. We don't give a damn about the Middle East.
Al Adab| 2.17.12 @ 3:44PM
Appeasement by any other name good Doctor.
Clint| 2.18.12 @ 7:56AM
Read George Washington's Farewell Address, Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address And The Old Right.
" George Will, "Today, we have a very different kind of foreign policy. It’s called Wilsonian. And the premise of the Bush Doctrine is that America must spread democracy, because our national security depends upon it. And America can spread democracy. It knows how. It can engage in national building. This is conservative or not?"
William F. Buckley, " It’s not at all conservative. It’s anything but conservative. It’s not conservative at all, inasmuch as conservatism doesn’t invite unnecessary challenges. It insists on coming to terms with the world as it is …”
The Tea Party Rebellion Heads To A Brokered Convention.
Bob K.| 2.18.12 @ 12:14AM
Mr. Tabin,
Step back and take a deep breath!
You need to find another way to describe our near eastern foreign policy other than promoting democracy. It is not selling here and it's not selling in the rest of the world.
The idea that the USA can train other nations and cultures in "democracy" is sheer lunacy! How do you propose to do it? At gunpoint? Nations and cultures evolve their own versions of democracy which is some kind of majority rule based on their own histories.
Ideally a democratic people should be free and it's democracy should promote freedom. How do we "teach" others to be free when in our own country we are losing more and more of our own freedoms every day? And we are doing it "democratically."
This is why so many voters here are saying that we need to put our own house in order first before we go off on more "great adventures."
Hobbes| 2.18.12 @ 11:55AM
Wilson promoted Democracy in Germany and see where that got him. A democratically elected Nazi party. the world was better of with the kaiser.