In Human Events this morning I call for this lying and ungrateful rogue state to get off the taxpayers’ dole:
Why is the U.S. government continuing to send billions of taxpayer dollars to Pakistan?
One way to give the economy a shot in the arm would be to stop sending huge sums of money to a nation that quite clearly is no longer our ally, if it ever was. The latest confirmation of this came Saturday, when the Pakistani parliament threatened to cut off NATO access to a transit facility used to get troops into Afghanistanin in retaliation for the American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
One might reasonably have assumed that the Pakistani government, which has received well over a billion dollars a year from the United States since 9/11 in order to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, would be embarrassed by the fact that bin Laden was discovered on its soil, clearly enjoying””for years””the protection of highly placed Pakistani officials. In response to that embarrassment, it would have been reasonable to expect the Pakistani government to start working hard to demonstrate its trustworthiness to the Americans, to show them that all the money that the U.S. has poured into Pakistan has not been wasted, and that as it continues to flow, it will not be wasted.
Instead, Pakistan’s parliament not only threatened to cut off NATO”s access to the transit facility, but called for its working agreement with the United States to be reviewed. It was illustrative of where Pakistan stands in the fight against the global jihad, and where it has stood since Sept. 11, 2001. The U.S. has paid billions to Pakistan since then in order to aid its government’s fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It has been revealed, however, that much of that money has gone to those same organizations, and that the ISI, Pakistan’s spy service, has significant ties with al-Qaeda.
And in light of that, it’s clear that the Pakistani parliament’s call for a review of Pakistan’s working agreement with the U.S. is a great idea. The U.S. should be reviewing it too, but instead President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others have reaffirmed Pakistan’s supposed value as an ally, and minimized the damage done by the revelations of how the Pakistanis sheltered bin Laden for so many years….