June 21, 2010, - 3:31 pm
Can’t Afford College? Pretend You’re Iraqi
When I read, the other day, that the Obama and Bush Administrations spent over $50 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars to “clean up hazardous waste” in Iraq, I thought that was bad enough. After all, that money could be better spent cleaning up waste here, including the oil spill in the Gulf.
But it gets worse. If you can’t afford to send your kid to college, too bad. You’re sending some Iraqi’s kid to college.
The Obama U.S. State Department is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to send at least 400 Iraqi students to college, beginning this summer. The State Department awarded grants to the Academy for Educational Development, which is funding the college education and all expenses for these Iraqis in America and 200 more Iraqis in Great Britain. The money will also go to develop something called the Iraq Higher Education Advising Network and help Iraq to eventually send 10,000 Iraqi students to study abroad, all expenses paid. And don’t be surprised if Americans are ultimately stuck with the bill for the entire 10,000.
This is ridiculous. We didn’t destroy Iraq as a country. The nation has its own colleges, collects its own taxes, and charges us and everyone else money for its oil. The Iraqis should be footing the bill to send their kids to college, whether it’s there or here. There is absolutely no reason we should be doing this.
When will we stop paying for Iraq infrastructure, welfare, and everything else? The time must come for us to walk away and make a clean break. We made a mistake going in because we handed the country to Iranian-allied Shi’ites. Let Iran pay for the country’s welfare. And let the country learn to spend its own funds from oil, taxes, and everything else in prudent ways.
It is not the U.S. taxpayers’ responsibility to put Iraqi kids through college on U.S. soil when most U.S. taxpayers cannot afford to put their own American citizen kids through college on U.S. soil.
Enough is enough. When does it end? America has a big enough welfare state. Why must we have an auxiliary welfare state in the Middle East?
Reader Steve writes:
The story and the comments that follow speak for themselves. We are paying to educate Iraqis as if we don’t need to educate our fellow Americans and train them for jobs. It’s always America second, anybody else first with our insane government.
Love your work Debbie. I want to encourage you to hang in there at all times, thousands of people love you and appreciate you.
Thanks, Steve. And right on. We need to take care of America, first and always.
Tags: Academy for Educational Development, college, free tuition, Iraq, Iraq Higher Education Advising Network, Iraqi, Iraqi students, scholarships, State Department, taxpayers, US funds, welfare, welfare state
Back in 97 or so, I attended evening classes at a Lutheran University. Two young men from Kuwait were in one of my classes and the thing I remember most about them was that each of them said their government was paying for them to come here and go to school. Their tuition, room and board, etc. was being paid for because there was so much oil money. If that was the case (and admittedly, I don’t know if what they said was true), then why would we have to pay for Iraqis to go to college? Contrary to what liberals may think, they still have their oil.
KerryB on June 21, 2010 at 4:15 pm