Military aid should cease

In the Opinion page article "Foreign Aid Serves US Interests - Keep It Flowing," Dec. 31, the author's case for keeping foreign aid flowing states that it "goes for humanitarian needs and US security purposes."

I spent most of my 31 years of United Nations service in the development assistance business and I wouldn't quarrel with the author about the value of meeting humanitarian needs. But I believe that whatever legitimacy may have been ascribed to US military aid withered with the collapse of the "evil empire."

Military aid now serves mainly to keep in power the governments, good or bad, that receive it. Their guns are trained more often on their own people than on external threats to their security. The case that US military aid enhances our own security is tenuous at best. The world would be a better place without it. R. Bruce Stedman, Hayward, Wis.

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