On the eve of his departure from office, President George W Bush's global reputation as a reviled war-monger might appear to be sealed. Yet the most right-wing president in recent memory has become the unlikely darling of anti-poverty activists for his unsung efforts to help Africa.Under Mr Bush's leadership, America is firmly among the countries who Oliver Buston, a prominent campaigner specialising in tracking the G8's promises, calls the 'good guys'. Mr Buston places America among the G8 nations doing everything possible to redeem the Gleneagles pledge on raising aid budgets.
In the last year of Bill Clinton's presidency, America's direct bilateral assistance to Africa was only Pounds 700 million. Mr Bush has almost quadrupled this sum.
Combating Aids once played virtually no part in America's development policies. Mr Bush has established the biggest fund ever devoted to fighting an epidemic. The President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, funded to the tune of Pounds 7.5 billion, is paying for hundreds of thousands of Africans to receive the life-saving drugs which hold Aids at bay. Mr Bush has also made America the biggest single donor to the Global Fund for Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, contributing one third of its Pounds 5 billion.
No other leader has given as much money to the World Food Programme as Mr Bush. America now provides about half of all the emergency food aid distributed across the globe.
Countries which desperately need this help often have viscerally anti-American governments. The rulers of Sudan and Zimbabwe, where millions depend on emergency food supplies, probably do not grasp the irony of the man they vilify keeping so many of their own people alive.
Bob Geldof, the anti-poverty campaigner, has often praised Mr Bush's 'Africa story'. Overall, however, this side of the president's legacy has earned him few votes and precious little international credit. The point, as Mr Geldof stresses, is that Mr Bush helped Africa anyway.
| To quote Orrin Judd: 'W is governing for the world's future, not for headlines in today's fishwrap.' Not that we should ignore the MSM; as the NYT has demonstrated, a dying empire can cause considerable trouble. But look at what Bush is doing with Africa, India, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Pacific Rim, and you see a long-term strategy that promotes personal liberty, economic freedom and democratic government. That's in the interests of all those countries, and not so coincidentally, it's in ours as well. Perhaps this is why Pinch and Nancy and the rest hate him so. |
