Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS
by Kevin Myers
Posted on 08/04/2009 6:50:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
He wasn’t an “about him” type of person. I miss that in a President.
The left will never give President Bush credit for saving lives, because for them it was not about saving lives, it was about looking like you cared.
For the left, nothing is about getting results. It's ALL about show.
That's shameful. YOU are shameful for spitting on the service of our Air National Guard.
Here it is. Both an outright lie and a belittling of our military. SHAME on you.
I'll save ya the trouble. "No, unless there was activation (voluntary or involuntary) for duty. The Guardsman or Reservist would not be classed as a vet".
Now if there were prior service, or subsequent service in any branch then the (questioned classification)would be considered a vet.
And I am limiting my comments to the Vietnam era. Todays Guard and Reserves have my fullest respect for their service. Trust me, I tried to join'em. The military has gentle way of saying 'beat it ya old geezer: "Sorry sir too long of break in service".
And yes I know some 5,000 plus souls or were activated during VN from Guard and Reserve units.
it was exactly that Change of Behavior requirement that made the program work.
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African men and women know that it worked, and are grateful for the improvement in their lives. I hope that they do not forget, while they are being mesmerized by the current occupant of the White House - given his close ties to Africa.
I know Bush was not perfect, but I miss him.
The difference with liberals is that they would rather blame bush for the million lives he didn’t save.
When we honor vets, we honor ALL who have served. You don't get the right to say a man is not a vet just because you can't stand him. Everyone who served during the Viet Nam era is a veteran and deserves our honor -even a President of the United States you don't like.
So shame on you. You can attack and belittle President Bush because you're a little man and that's what you do, but you don't have the right to belittle our veterans.
And btw, I worked as a car hop for $1.00 and hour and served breakfast and cleaned dishes in an old folks home. The difference between you and me is that I'm not a whiner, and consider the building of character and the lack of wealth a positive, and not something to blame on someone else.
Grow up. And quit complaining. NO one feels sorry for you no matter how pathetically you try to present yourself.
And I think they also know that Obama is not. (Did you read the article about Obama as an African Colonial written by an African? Fascinating).
I've also noted that people overseas don't tend to be easily mesmerized by our Poseur in Chief as gullible, stupid Americans are. They probably have him figured out already.
Besides which, he won't do anything for Africa if it doesn't help him. And nothing in Africa will make him look good. He'll ignore them, just like Clinton did. It takes a genuine concern for others to care about Africa - just like that of President Bush. Obama cares only for himself.
50 years from now, history will show how great a president he was..... versus the present punk socialist in chief
I guess you are sorry your boy McCain lost. ...loser!!!! Change your name to Drools okay?
There's a socialist in the white house, and you are writing about Bush....change your name to Moonbat
I agree.... sure wish the Bush bashers would return to their home at du. They do it all the time.
Maybe we should resurrect Johnson and Roosevelt and throw a little mud at them because they used YOUR money for these programs.
Bush might have been popular to those to whom he was writing billion dollar checks, but that hardly helps those of us who will have to eventually have to cough-up or else to cover those checks.
Since we didn't actually have the money, we are borrowing it, mostly, from the Chicoms, and the debt and burdensome interest will affect not just the current generation, but future generations. The Chinese on the other hand are actually investing in Africa, buying hard assets, strategic resources, and building relationships by selling weapons.
Relevant article:
by Kevin Myers
One is my conscience, and the other is the picture, yet again, of another wide-eyed child, yet again, gazing, yet again, at the camera, which yet again, captures the tragedy of . . .
Sorry. My conscience has toured this territory on foot and financially. Unlike most of you, I have been to Ethiopia; like most of you, I have stumped up the loot to charities to stop starvation there. The wide-eyed boy-child we saved, 20 years or so ago, is now a priapic, Kalashnikov-bearing hearty, siring children whenever the whim takes him.
There is, no doubt a good argument why we should prolong this predatory and dysfunctional economic, social and sexual system; but I do not know what it is. There is, on the other hand, every reason not to write a column like this.
It will win no friends, and will provoke the self-righteous wrath of, well, the self-righteous, letter-writing wrathful, a species which never fails to contaminate almost every debate in Irish life with its sneers and its moral superiority. It will also probably enrage some of the finest men in Irish life, like John O'Shea, of Goal; and the Finucane brothers, men whom I admire enormously. So be it.
But, please, please, you self-righteously wrathful, spare me mention of our own Famine, with this or that lazy analogy. There is no comparison. Within 20 years of the Famine, the Irish population was down by 30pc. Over the equivalent period, thanks to western food, the Mercedes 10-wheel truck and the Lockheed Hercules, Ethiopia's has more than doubled.
Alas, that wretched country is not alone in its madness. Somewhere, over the rainbow, lies Somalia, another fine land of violent, Kalashnikov-toting, khat-chewing, girl-circumcising, permanently tumescent layabouts.
Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually
hyperactive indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world.
This dependency has not stimulated political prudence or commonsense. Indeed, voodoo idiocy seems to be in the ascendant, with the next president of South Africa being a firm believer in the efficacy of a little tap water on the post-coital penis as a sure preventative against infection. Needless to say, poverty, hunger and societal meltdown have not prevented idiotic wars involving Tigre, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea etcetera.
Broad brush-strokes, to be sure. But broad brush-strokes are often the way that history paints its gaudier, if more decisive, chapters. Japan, China, Russia, Korea, Poland, Germany, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 20th century have endured worse broad brush-strokes than almost any part of Africa.
They are now -- one way or another -- virtually all giving aid to or investing in Africa, whereas Africa, with its vast savannahs and its lush pastures, is giving almost nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS.
Meanwhile, Africa's peoples are outstripping their resources, and causing catastrophic ecological degradation. By 2050, the population of Ethiopia will be 177 million: The equivalent of France, Germany and Benelux today, but located on the parched and increasingly protein-free wastelands of the Great Rift Valley.
So, how much sense does it make for us actively to increase the adult population of what is already a vastly over-populated, environmentally devastated and economically dependent country?
How much morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child from starvation today, for it to survive to a life of brutal circumcision, poverty, hunger, violence and sexual abuse, resulting in another half-dozen such wide-eyed children, with comparably jolly little lives ahead of them? Of course, it might make you feel better, which is a prime reason for so much charity. But that is not good enough.
For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed.
It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade. It is inspiring Bill Gates' programme to rid the continent of malaria, when, in the almost complete absence of personal self-discipline, that disease is one of the most efficacious forms of population-control now operating.
If his programme is successful, tens of millions of children who would otherwise have died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he boasts. Oh good: then what?I know. Let them all come here. Yes, that's an idea.
kmyers@independent.ie
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I quite understand what Bush did. He was sending tax dollars (borrowed ones at that) overseas. He put Africans’ interests ahead of American’s interests when he did so. What he did with his own money was praiseworthy. What he did with public money was not. What part of the US is damn near insolvent don’t you get? Or are we going to pay for Africans, and blow off our commitment to older American’s social security? That is the precise choice we have to make and the amount is in the TRILLIONS of dollars.
He’s being righteous with other people’s money. As long as he’s spending his own, good for him. Meanwhile Americans owe China more debt. Not good.
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