We buy our friends.
Then we buy our enemies, who, in turn, become our friends… until they need money again.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
It’s the same sad old story my father told me and I tell to others.
It’s the same sad old story that most of us find ourselves repeating, time and time again.
In an effort to act as the world’s police, the United States consistently ponies up its citizens’ tax dollars to dictators and monsters all across the globe. It allows us to prop up regimes, dictate the policy of other nations, and exploit resources at the expense of a united global security.
You think foreign terrorists want to attack us because of our freedom and liberty?
That’s what the puppets in Washington want you to believe.
But ask yourself this: How would you feel if a foreign government walked into your neighborhood fully armed, pilfered your property, and made sure you had no way to defend yourself?
Yeah, I’d be pretty pissed off, too. Certainly enough to want to fight back, even if that meant with violence.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to advocate for or defend the actions of terrorists who attack innocent civilians.
I am saying that if we really want to live in peace, we need to set the record straight.
A Horrible Thing Happened…
In the United States, we often squirm at the images we see of foreign atrocities on the news: chemical attacks in Syria, genocides in Africa, concentration camps in North Korea. There’s definitely no shortage of humanitarian crises on this planet.
And in all fairness, the people of the United States are some of the most generous in the world, donating billions to help those in need, regardless of where they live.
That being said, many of the world’s wars and humanitarian crises are also facilitated by the immoral actions of the very snakes we elect to run this once great Democracy.
Just last week, while the mainstream media spent most of the time creating fancy digital time clocks and instigating dogfights between partisan slaves and apologists over the shutdown, an incredibly horrible thing happened…
Soldier Up!
It’s called the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA), and its purpose is to keep the U.S. from offering military assistance to countries that recruit and use child soldiers.
For the sake of clarification, child soldiers are considered to be those under 18 who have been forced to fight, or those under 15 who have volunteered.
This is actually one of the vilest practices in the world.
As Human Rights Watch explains, these young people — sometimes as young as eight years old — fight on the front lines, participate in suicide missions, and act as spies, messengers, and lookouts. Girls are sometimes forced into sexual slavery, and nearly all are abducted or recruited by force.
As you can imagine, such a scenario could never be something that we as a peace-loving, free people could ever endorse or support.
So why is it then that last Monday, President Obama decided to exempt three countries from the CSPA and approve them to receive your tax dollars?
Capitalism, Not Violence
The U.S. State Department has identified Chad, South Sudan, and Yemen as countries that recruit and use child soldiers. That makes them ineligible to receive military aid from the United States.
But tucked away in that law is what’s called a “national security interest” waiver, which gives the president the authority to override the law whenever he wants…
And that’s exactly what happened last Monday. Check it out:
Now, I realize some folks may read this and say, “Well, maybe it’s a national security issue.” And perhaps it is.
But why do we always assume the best course of action is to add our own brand of patriotic fuel to the fire?
It doesn’t work! It never has, and we have plenty of dead soldiers to prove it.
As I’ve always said, if you want to help fight dictatorial regimes and humanitarian crises, do so with the gift of capitalism, not violence.
While the president and most members of Congress ignore the fact that we’re arming children to fight wars we have no business being anywhere near, those who embrace free market solutions are making a real difference — pulling folks out of poverty and saving child soldiers from lives that will undoubtedly be cut short.
How Does This Make You Feel?
Sheikh Abu Turay is a former Liberian refugee who spent 14 years in a U.N. refugee camp.
He’s also a great man and an honorable capitalist who launched a company called Liberation Cocoa.
His story reads as follows…
After nearly two decades of civil war, Liberia lost 250,000 lives and had 150,000 former child soldiers looking for a way to reengage in society. Cocoa farming, once an economic engine and critical source of employment in this impoverished West African country, had virtually collapsed.
Enter Sheikh A. Turay, an entrepreneur who, after spending more than a decade in a refugee camp, returned to Liberia only to find destruction, despair and economic collapse. He committed himself to a seemingly impossible dream with little more than his intellect and energy to help former child soldiers eager to reintegrate into society by employing them to restore abandoned cocoa farms. Sheikh served to guide and coach these young adults to become socially and economically responsible citizens and skilled, passionate cocoa farmers.
My friends, that’s how you contribute to ending a humanitarian crisis: hard work, determination, and an unwavering capitalist spirit.
Unfortunately, that is not something we can export.
No, instead we send money to ruthless dictators so they can force young children into a war that is not their doing. And by the way, that money is your money.
How does that make you feel?
It’s real simple, folks. You want peace? You want freedom? You want security? Then we have to stop allowing these bureaucrats to use our money to fund their own, unethical agendas both here and abroad.
Whether they’re putting guns in the hands of eight-year-old children in the Middle East, or colluding with the banks to steal your wealth, we can never truly be safe and we can never truly be free when we arm our enemies, both domestic and foreign.
Live honorably, live free…
Jeff Siegel for Freedom Watch
