U.S Foreign "Aid"

The United States sends foreign aid to numerous countries in the Middle East, yet, those countries are starting to lose support in the aid they are receiving. According to the Abu Dhabi Gallup poll, 52% of Egyptians oppose any form of U.S. economic aid at all. Which I understand because, well, we tend to support some leaders that don't exactly make sound decisions when it comes to helping grow their country. A focus needs to be taken away from directly funding leaders, to helping support the people and their economies in order to stimulate the process of the Arab Spring. We had a top-down economic aid approach, which seemed to never actually reach the bottom. So, we have changed our approach to a bottom-up system, supporting civil society, investing in small enterprises and hopefully allowing for bureaucracies to grow. That sounds all well and fine, except that Congress seems to be ignoring countries with a fairly stable system in place that just need an extra financial boost, such a Morocco, while handing out large sums of money to countries like Egypt that does not even have the appropriate institutions in place to properly use the money we are giving them to "boost their economies through bottom-up programs". This misappropriation of funds is hurting not only the countries that need help and can grow substantially from it, but it hurts the U.S. budget as well. It seems as though we have the idea of support, but we can never actually put money in the right places.

 One of the biggest issues with U.S. foreign aid seems to be the constant battle of defense and security spending over development spending in countries in the Middle East. It was reported that $2 billion of the $3.5 billion sent abroad is specifically spent on military assistance. It is in the best interest of the United States to be putting more money into defense in certain countries in the Middle East, allowing countries such as Lebanon to hold back defensively against groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.  It is evident that these countries need more then just military assistance, in recent demonstrations in Israel, the people need social programs as well as military aid. The people of the Arab Spring didn't revolt (in any country) because their military did not have enough support, they were upset about strong hold regimes, lack of resources, and overall poor quality of life established by their leaders. They don't want more protection from external forces, they want help and support for building their own ways of life, they want jobs to support their families, health care, and opposition to regimes that violate human rights to an extreme. It seems that the citizens of these countries truly are not asking for anything spectacular, just some help being able to get on their feet financially and actually have a say in their governments.  Yet, U.S. "aid" is not exactly meeting their needs, causing the countries we support to lose interest, and faith in the "support" we are offering to boost their economies.