Waging a War We Could Be Proud Of
By Nicholas D. Kristof
One of the lessons of the tsunami a year ago is that however stingy we Americans have been in giving foreign aid, we want to do better.
For every $100 of national income, the U.S. gives 17 cents in overseas development assistance – a lower percentage than any donor country except Italy. But after the tsunami, Americans responded with a wave of stunning generosity, and there is growing bipartisan support for helping poor countries.
It’s an opportunity that President Bush should seize, by working with Tony Blair and Kofi Annan to wage a Global War on Poverty.
President Bush could help revive his floundering presidency by providing moral leadership to the world. He has taken half-steps in this direction, with his landmark programs against AIDS in Africa and against sex trafficking, but his overall efforts against global poverty have been grudging. It’s sad when we must rely on a compassionate rock star, Bono, or a generous computer geek, Bill Gates, for moral vision on poverty – instead of on our president.
If the tsunami demonstrated how generous Americans could be, it also showed the blindness of a system that responds to natural disasters but neglects ongoing suffering. For example, here in the northwestern Sri Lankan town of Puttalam, people might be better off if the tsunami had reached this far and sucked a few victims out to sea.
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Kristof Poverty Nicholas Kristof War on Poverty Bush
