Foreign policy column misses the mark

David Fiocco's Oct. 24 column about the evils of American foreign policy is ridiculous. He seems to think that President George W. Bush has single-handedly taken American foreign policy to the stance of an imperial aggressor and that the only solution is to elect Democrats to a majority of Congress. Fiocco bemoans the fact that the United States doesn't give away money and that we are expanding the number of countries in which U.S. troops operate.

Well, why should we give money away? Especially to nations that he himself says have corrupt governments? Although apparently Fiocco is unaware that Americans DO give money away, through the U.N. budget and through a large variety of charities. Poor countries don't need American dollars to turn their situations around, they need democracy and capitalism. This is of course what American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are trying to secure for those countries, but Fiocco believes these are evil actions merely because Bush is president.

The biggest mistake that Fiocco makes is to assume that only Bush has adopted such attitudes in foreign policy. I would like Fiocco to name a recent president who gave away tons of money to every poor country with no strings attached and who withdrew American troops from a large number of foreign theaters. He won't be able to, because there have been no such presidents since the end of World War II. We have troops stationed around the world because we have been invited to stay by the host nations, and those nations benefit from both the protection of our troops and the money they spend to live there. Furthermore, most of our foreign bases are engaged in humanitarian missions unlike the Middle Eastern theater.

I can't say it any better than Rush Limbaugh: "The United States has liberated and helped more people than any other entity in the history of the world." That's a foreign policy to be proud of, not condemned, on election day.

Mike Jenista

Graduate student in mathematics