Tell Congress to invest in civilian, not military aid for Egypt

The whole world has been inspired by the pro-democracy revolution underway in Egypt. But here in America, we're also worried about further government escalation and crack downs against the non-violent opposition. ¹

We should be. We’ve already seen a scary preview of what that would look like, when Egypt’s brutal police forces used ‘Made in America’ tear gas on protesters.²

You see, the U.S. gives Egypt over $1.3 billion every year to buy tanks and guns. We even REQUIRE them to buy those weapons from American gun merchants, in a huge backdoor subsidy of the U.S. weapons industry.³

Instead of helping Egypt build schools or roads or even a working court system -- things that could really help them in a moment of crisis like this one -- all we’ve put in their hands is the means to kill people.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Congress is about to set a new budget for 2012, and how much and what kind of aid we give to Egypt and other countries is very much under discussion.⁴ Click here to tell Congress that we want to invest in CIVILIAN aid, not military aid and make freedom and democracy our leading exports again.

http://act.truemajorityaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=182

It’s not just Egypt – all over the world our government gives repressive dictators billions of dollars specifically to buy weapons from American manufacturers.⁵ The reality is that a lot of those governments use the weapons bought with our tax money to oppress their own people.

The weapons builders don’t care who shoots who with their guns, so long as they can make a fortune selling them. And most taxpayers don’t even know that we spend most of our foreign aid money on weapons.⁶ But USAction/TrueMajority members like you have been fighting to cut weapons spending for years. And if the Egypt crisis shows us one thing, it’s that cutting the Pentagon budget is a good idea internationally, as well as domestically.

Help us send that message to Congress, and then, tell some friends too. Everyone wishes we could do something to help the Egyptian protesters – disarming their government is a good place to start.

For Peace,

Drew Hudson
USAction / TrueMajority

1 – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/middleeast/08diplomacy.html?hp
2 – http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/egypt-protest-police-us-made-tear-gas-demonstrators/story?id=12785598
3 – http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/28/egypt_in_washington/index.html
4 – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/opinion/06lew.html?scp=1&sq=the%20easy%20cuts&st=Search
5 – http://www.thenation.com/article/158221/winter-discontent
6 – http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/polls-show-americans-largely-clueless-about-where-us-budget-goes.php