Editor’s Note: This week’s essay comes from PoliceOne Contributor Keith Bettinger. In PoliceOne “First Person” essays, our Members and Columnists candidly share their own unique view of the world. This is a platform from which individual officers can share their own personal insights on issues confronting cops today, as well as opinions, observations, and advice on living life behind the thin blue line. If you want to share your own perspective with other P1 Members, simply send us an e-mail with your story.
By Keith Bettinger
Police1 Contributor
I have an email out to Pat Lynch, New York City Police Benevolent Association president asking if the police and fire unions are collecting donations for the many members of each service that lost their homes due to Superstorm Sandy.
One hundred and eleven homes burned to the ground in the community of Breezy Point. Many of New York’s Finest and Bravest live in that community. Even though their community now looks like downtown Berlin during World War II, they still go to work helping other city residents. If the unions are collecting a check will go out to each of them from my wife, Lynn and me. In fact, that is what we decided to do for Christmas this year — give less to one another and instead help those so badly affected by Sandy’s devastation.
While sitting and thinking to whom I should send money to help our former neighbors in need, I wondered why there is no quid pro quo from all the nations to whom we give foreign aid. Why do we send billions of dollars each year to Egypt? Do you know they have our Abrams tanks — the best tank we have — and that they were parked in the streets of Cairo during their recent riots?
Remember that Tsunami that struck all of Southeast Asia a couple years ago? Our Navy responded and flew in food, medical supplies and staff to treat them. One internet photo showed a dirtbag helping to unload a US Navy helicopter while wearing an Osama Bin Laden tee shirt.
How’s that for a pair of you know what?
In Afghanistan we are feeding the hungry, giving medical assistance, helping them rebuild their country, and what do we get in exchange — out military members shot and killed by the same people they are training to take back their own country.
Did you notice that little incident in Benghazi, Lybia? You know the one, the one that happened on the anniversary date of the worst attack committed against the United States on its own soil. All we have to show for helping the country is the flagged draped caskets of four American heroes and patriots.
Our border has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. Our Border Patrol agents are in an undeclared war with drug dealers and people dealing in other nefarious activities. When Hitler sent his armed troops into Poland in 1939 and took over the country it was called an invasion. Why when armed people illegally cross our border isn’t it called an invasion and handled with the force necessary to overcome it?
So here’s what I think we should do. Since we’re headed for the “fiscal cliff” and we can’t balance a federal budget and no foreign governments are sending relief supplies and money here to help our victims, let’s stop giving our hard-earned money to all these countries that can’t stand us, don’t like us, and have no use for us, unless they need us.
Let’s keep that foreign aid money and balance our budget with it. Let’s get help to the people on the east coast that need help recovering from Sandy — today’s news report said New Jersey needs 12 Billion to cover their storm damages and my old home state — New York needs 24 billion. If we used that foreign aid money to rebuild the east coast, we could put the unemployed to work, buy the supplies needed to rebuild, and give those people, especially the Bravest and the Finest, an opportunity to recover.
Oh, and the next time some third world nation that blames us for everything that is wrong in their pitiful part of the world comes with their hand out and asks for aid we simply tell them, “Sorry, we’re not handling your problem today, but we wish you well and please don’t hesitate to call us again in the future. Right now we’re taking care of our own.”
