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June 13, 2005
The Disaster of Africa
It is exceedingly hard for me to believe that anyone cannot be moved by the continual reports of the numerous disasters occuring in Africa, from Somalia to Darfur to Zimbabwe. Thousands of people are dying from AIDS, malnutrition, civil war, and genocide. It is a horror story, a real one, happening right before our eyes. And more than anything it represents where we, in the U.S., are as a country. Considering what our great country is capable of accomplishing we have done next to nothing. Last week Tony Blair pressed Bush for significant increases in aid. G.W. promised $670 million, far, far short of the billions he sought.
So what is the story here, why so little help? We face disasters of huge proportions, where is American leadership? The cynic in me thinks that G.W. sees no political advantage in getting involved. The U.S. economy is sputtering, except for the upper 1% of the population. The government is running HUGE deficits and consequently has little money to give. U.S. security is not threatened. At the moment few terrorists come from Africa yet. There are no crazy dictators with lots of oil developing non-existent weapons of mass destruction that are not targeted on U.S. cities. Because of current deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq the President has few troops to send to quell local unrest. And he certainly does not want any insurgent type war developing against U.S. troops in Africa. In addition, the various crises appear to have little impact on his domestic standing. From a political standpoint he probably feels he won't score any points by pouring money into the region And he especially won't gain anything by sending troops. The real tragedy is that the humanitarian issues don't seem to concern him. This is from a "religious" man, someone who should be concerned about just this sort of thing. Yet his interests are clearly focused on the need to continue playing to large corporate interests and his right wing religious base rather than doing the right thing.
Posted by Chip Spear at June 13, 2005 8:59 AM
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