Bush Is No Blair - The Nation

by Ari Berman

Wilsonian Republicans love to compare George W. Bush and
Tony Blair. So let's contrast their positions on Africa: Blair calls the continent's problems "the fundamental moral challenge of our time" and pledges to double the amount of aid Britain sends there. Bush's position: "It doesn't fit our budgetary process."

It's a process where the $2 billion the US gives to Africa each year is what the Pentagon spends in 36 hours and America's $500 billion defense budget is 250 times larger than its commitment to African assistance. "The greatest hoax of our time," is how leading development expert Jeffrey Sachs described the argument that the US cannot afford to help alleviate African suffering at a recent panel on security sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future. "In 2002, the US gave $3 per sub-Saharan African," Sachs writes in his bold new book The End of Poverty. "Taking out the parts for US consultants and technical cooperation, food and other emergency aid, the administrative costs and debt relief, the aid per African came to the grand total of perhaps 6 cents."

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