Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy

One of the biggest debates over US foreign aid is how the money is spent, and where the money is actually going. In US politics, the bogeyman of foreign aid is often used to justify cuts in the US budget of wasteful spending, with Rand and Ron Paul being probably the two biggest proponents of this. However, US foreign aid has been used effectively and for good causes recently, just look at George W. Bush's AIDS policies for Africa. In both of the articles we have read, the authors write about whether or not foreign aid works. However, looking at US foreign aid today, the top 5 countries who receive US foreign aid (Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Egypt) are not receiving foreign aid exclusively for development. Most of this aid is for the purpose of anti-terrorism efforts and strengthening the militaries of these nations. Israel does not need any development aid, for example, while Pakistan and Afghanistan do need development aid, yet the money sent there is very poorly managed. The point of what I am trying to say is this: while the idea of spending foreign aid to help developing nations grow is in fact US policy, it is not the main tenet of US foreign aid: military aid and support in the War on Terror is. And here I would say that while we are giving money to these countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan) for economic aid as well, they have both squandered this money and are very unreliable partners in the War on Terror, so I would agree with Easterly and the Pauls that our foreign aid is in fact misspent and poorly managed, and needs to in the least be reviewed.