And maybe the rest of the world will be unappreciative, but I'm not comfortable spending that money to be loved anyway. It was a good deed and that's enough.
+1
Excerpt:
A decade ago, Africa was literally dying. While the rest of the world advanced through free market reforms in the last two decades, Africa was left out, in no small part because so many of its people were either dying of AIDS or expecting to die. This curse made development or hope in the future nearly impossible....
... President Bush took it upon himself to start a new kind of aid program with Africa in mind. It would not be like the others, which were mostly multi-billion-dollar ratholes that only enriched aid rackets and government elites....
The programs focused less on delivering cash to governments and instead focused on partnering with businesses that create life-saving drugs, and working with churches to deliver preventive treatments.... That approach, bypassing weak and corrupt governments, ensured that aid got delivered.
It also made those countries allies....
Even as Bush’s achievement is largely unknown or ignored here, it’s known across Africa. People from Kenya, South Sudan, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria repeatedly praise Bush’s initiative and consider him a hero....
Bush himself said he believed he acted in the U.S. national security interest. “Suffering abroad can be a warning sign of future disorder and conflict—the distant thunder that reveals a gathering storm. It is hopelessness that aids extremists and spreads deadly ideologies,” he wrote in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.
Now Africa is transformed, a continent loaded with countries on an upward economic trajectory with a viable labor force and real prospects for foreign investment and the economic growth that follows.
In coming years, Africa will matter economically because the life-or-death scourge of AIDS is no longer the threat it once was. As such, President Bush is the real hero here, his quiet humanitarian work to save lives as strong as any of his other accomplishments.
Yep.
There’s a bit to criticize Bush about, but not this.
bttt