Back in the Game Again

I, too, saw Bush's speech last night when I should have been doing my homework, so I could have gone to bed at a reasonable hour. Although I'm not so concerned about his pronounciation, all the sabre-rattling did scare me.

His domestic policy was just as scary, but thankfully, as a Canadian, I can take pleasure in the knowledge that I can sit back watch the States dissolve into a Third World country without it directly affecting me. Did anyone notice that his speech contained a call for privatized social security, "personal retirement accounts," as well as stating his belief that the reason 40 million Americans lack health insurance and another 100 million are under-insured is because of "lawsuits"? Uh-huh. That helping people financially through welfare was wrong, but financially supporting religious organization to do the same thing was A-OK. That he called for "protecting infants at the hour of their birth" by banning "partial birth" abortion, sideswiping the issue that that rare procedure is only done to protect the mother. That he'll protect national forests from forest fires by cutting them down--why wait for nature when there's profit to be made. That all this fuss over reducing automobile emissions now is ridiculous, when for less than the price of the Canadian gun registry, we can have hydrogen cars. That he called for over one TRILLION dollars to be paid out from the budget in tax cuts and new spending (the majority of that money going to help out those poor people who have to pay taxes on their dividends) as a way of promoting fiscal responsibility. And that figure doesn't include what it would cost if the US actually went to war. And I don't even want to think about what "homeland security" really means and why he chooses a word out of 1984 to describe his country.

Then, there's Iraq. About which I'll start with a "joke." What do you call a man who has the largest arsenal of chemical and biological weapons in the world and who has repeatedly and deliberately violated international nuclear weapons treaties? Mr. President. My problem with Iraq and the whole situation is that frankly I don't understand it. I don't know if anyone really does. So much of the war "debate" is pretty stultifying stuff. Warmongers spouting patriotic phrases. Peace activists shouting "give peace a chance" and making up complicated international conspiracy theories. I don't even have a problem with the interventionist aspect, theoretically. But I haven't bought into the notion, that even many war skeptics claim, that Saddam is, in the scheme of things, really that bad. Sure, the elections there are a farce. But a real vote would bring the fundamentalist Shia majority into power. Tell me again how the world would be safer if Iraq were more like Saudia Arabia and Iran? Sure, in the 1980's he used brutal means to suppress the Kurdish rebellion, and may routinely torture dissidents. But these were the expected tactics of U.S.-supported regimes from the 80's: Chile, El Salvador, Congo, the Taliban in Afganistan, etc. (hmm, is there a pattern here?). I'm also not too excited about chemical or biological weapons he may or may not have. You can kill plenty more people with just guns or, as Rwanda showed, with machetes. And clearly, trying to link Saddam with Al-Queda has been a pretty miserable attempt at an excuse.

But what about nuclear weapons? I'll admit that the less countries which have the bomb the better. For example, North Korea, which Bush is forced to deal with by using "different strategies," i.e. with negotiations. So I guess that shows that if we don't go to war now, we may have to solve the problem down the road by entering into negotiations. What a horrible outcome!

Anyways, my real point that I wanted to rant about was the AIDS pledge. The level of funding, theoretically, is good. The sound bite sounds great. Even the fact that it may help to alleviate anti-americanism is probably a good thing too. But I think Andrew has hit the nail on its metaphorical head. What we don't know is how that money is going to be spent. About 1.5 billion dollars of that pledge is going to the broadly supported Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which supports a range of organization that work in all aspects of the epidemic from prevention to treatment to palliative care. Problem is, is that the group was expecting funding of 2.5 billion dollars, so in reality they're getting a huge cut in funding. So what about the other 13.5 billion dollars? Where is that money going to? To promote ineffective abstinence programs or to defy the Christian Coalition and support condom use and healthy sexuality programs? We'll see.

Bush also talked a lot about anti-retroviral therapy. This is what really makes me nervous. Africa is trying to convince the WTO to allow it to produce a whole range of life-saving drugs outside of pharmaceutical patent protection, which the US is fighting. Many of these drugs Africa is trying to gain free access to are anti retrovirals. If the US comes in and starts paying for part of the cost of the drugs, probably on some sort of cost-sharing basis, then it weakens the argument that these drugs should be in the public domain. This leaves Africa in the lurch when the program runs out in five years and they have to start paying the full cost of the drugs. Remember that Bush said that the cost of some of the drugs are down to $300 a year. Remember that the GDP of many African countries is not that much more than $300. And these aren't even cures. People will still die, but the country will be broke. I guess as Bush says, some people could call this a success.