How Refreshing

Mitt Romney announced that in his administration, American foreign aid to Egypt would be conditioned on the Egyptians meeting certain conditions. None of the conditions were onerous; they included things like Egypt’s maintaining the peace treaty with Israel (which originally gave rise to the US aid years ago). They all seem like common sense goals that America ought to have for Egyptian conduct and none seem like something to which the Egyptians should take offense. In short, it is a plan to use our foreign aid to actually achieve our goals in the world.

It is quite refreshing to hear that Romney would take this course as compared to the aimless foreign policy of the Obama years. We gave money to Mubarak; then we told him he had to go. We gave money to the military regime that replace Mubarak. Now we give money to the Moslem Brotherhood president who replaced the military in an extremely close election. America has not asked for anything in return. Indeed, even after the crowds attack the US embassy in Cairo and pulled down our flag, replacing it with the al Qaeda flag, we asked nothing of Egypt. When the president of Egypt declared a holiday so that more people could protest at the American embassy a month ago, Obama asked for nothing in return for continuing aid. He just kept shoveling out the money. It was as if we were rewarding the Egyptians for attacking our embassy.

Hopefully, Romney will win and we will see some common sense applied to American foreign policy. We have already seen how poorly the leftists who surround Obama have done. They are so worried about offending the Egyptians that they just give up on American policy aims. That has to end.