......your tax dollars aren’t being used,.....
From the web....
“Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a 69-year-old sociologist from the American University in Cairo, is lobbying members of Congress to attach conditions to America’s $1.5 billion annual aid to Egypt. “I am pushing for conditionality, and I would like the democracy and freedom agenda to be a bipartisan one,” Ibrahim said.”
Since money is fungible, the money freed up as a result of the $1.5 billion American foreign aid to Egypt, the dig might actually be paid for by US taxpayers.
I can live with that. Really, is there something so awful about archaeological research that American money shouldn't be used? Is there something in Egypt that's so much more important? I submit that seeing and understanding the past is important, and if we're going to be giving aid to Egypt anyway, there's no real reason it shouldn't be spent here as anywhere else. It's good to remind people that Egypt wasn't always Arab and Muslim, too.