U.S. Gov’t Conducts “Anti-Corruption” Seminar…in West Africa?

government-spendingOn March 11-15, the U.S. Government sponsored an anti-corruption workshop as part of the US State and Justice Department’s ongoing West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative (WASCI).

In a statement from the US State Department’s Official Blog aptly titled DipNote, “Africa loses more than $148 billion to corruption every year. These costs are not only measured in terms of squandered or stolen government resources, but in the lack of public funding for critical needs.”

One of the objectives of the State Department’s five-day workshop was to “to work with governments and civil society organizations to bring greater transparency and accountability to governments – thus making it harder for officials to steal from state coffers – and to strengthen the efforts of citizens to hold their governments accountable.”  This from the same DOJ and State Department who refused to answer questions about Fast and Furious or the Benghazi attacks without subpoena.

For generations the US has spent trillions of dollars in African foreign aid only to have that money squandered or pocketed by despotic kleptocrats while their populations succumb to human rights violations, poverty and drug violence.  At what point do we take a time out and check the score?

The Obama administration‘s, like the administrations before it both Democrat and Republican, desire to overhaul the image of the US (meaning secure their presidential legacy as not being racist) among the world’s despots by generously gifting away billions in taxpayer money without account.  In his attempts to “reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generousPresident Obama jet sets on numerous US apology tours, gifts billions, no questions asked, while saving his most hate-filled rhetoric for middle class American whose taxpayer money he uses to placate oppressive regimes.

Is it too much to ask for a stop loss contingency and a fiscal accountability clause put into WACSI language?  Concepts foreign to our own elected leadership.

Workshops and wealth redistribution clearly do not work here. (See Obama’s Business Forward economic workshop and the Detroit’s Automaker/UAW Bailout).  How can we expect the same policies to work amongst corrupt tyrannical leaders in West Africa?

We can either continue to gift $148 billion every year to despotic beneficiaries of weaponry, wealth and counter-narcotic intelligence to keep their populations in perpetual fear and submission or just let the autocrats squander $63 billion and let us use the other $85 billion to take care of trivial things like the Obama-led sequester.

That solution is far too easy and therefore would never be enacted by Ivy Leaguers.  It’s beside the point.  The point is to arbitrarily punish Middle America for their selfish and mean-spirited ways.  We must redistribute our tax dollars to feel what it’s like to suffer as other nations so we appreciate how good we have it.  Eat your Brussels spouts.  Don’t you know there are children starving in Africa?  Yes, but what do I have to do with it?

The thing is we do know how good we have it.  We are a compassionate nation – the first to respond in times of need while offering assistance to those who suffer.  There is no need to threaten the US populace with wealth redistribution and first responder furloughs in order to teach us an arbitrary lesson from the ruling class who are the most frivolous, petulant and corrupt among us.

These tyrants have to be rolling on the floor laughing at this administration’s naiveté.  Not since Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement foreign policy have pacifist bureaucrats been so devoid of reality.

 

Leslie Deinhammer

Illinois PolitiChick Leslie Anne Deinhammer, writer, chaplain and proud wife of a Marine Corps veteran, writes on topics of politics, human rights and faith. Follow her at @lesliedhammer on Twitter.

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