I am an American who is concerned about our debt and excessive spending on foreign aid to nations that work against us and kill our soldiers. Since the Senate and House Appropriations Committees are considering the foreign aid bill for fiscal year 2012, I would like to make my views very clear on this.

We need to reduce spending by all means possible, especially to places that work against the United States, such as Armenia. It should get less aid since it sold weapons to Iran and Iraq, which resulted in the death of U.S. soldier Matthew Straughter and the wounding of three others.

The same goes for the Nagorno-Karabakh region occupied by Armenia, which should not get any aid at all. That’s a total waste of money, especially considering that it is used for illegal drug and arms trade by Armenia and Iran.

At the same time, I urge sustained funding to Azerbaijan, which is a steadfast ally helping U.S. interests in the region and the Muslim world.

Specifically, I urge:

* Absolutely zero direct aid to the Armenia-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) region. The NK authorities are a military junta that occupied Azerbaijan and should not be rewarded with any aid under any pretext or guise!

* Reduce all aid to Armenia, which, despite getting almost $3 billion in U.S. aid, has been doing worse and worse every year in every aspect, from democracy and human rights to compliance with international and U.S. laws.

* Sustain current and past administrations’ aid requests for foreign military financing, international military education and training, economic, technical, humanitarian and democracy aid to Azerbaijan.

* Remove the discriminatory Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act of 1992. The U.S. president has been waiving it since 2001 and it needs to be removed completely from the books.

We need to spend less and spend wisely, helping only true friends and not rewarding hostiles. Foreign aid should be based on our national interests and be need-based.

And we should never send aid to illegal regimes like the Nagorno-Karabakh regime, which only perpetuates war.

Karahan Mete

Davis

Comments

comments