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Perhaps War Is Not the
Best Use Of Our Resources
By Courtland Milloy Senior Writer, The Washington
Post
A few questions, please:
Why are we so happy that Afghans can
now fly kites, shave their beards and wear short skirts when so few of
us seemed to care about their plight before Sept. 11?
What about the millions of Afghans who
are in danger of starvation this winter? Are they, too, flying kites amid
the land mines and unexploded cluster bombs?
Why does Britain's Prime Minister Tony
Blair get a warm embrace for helping us wage war, but when Gordon Brown,
Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, asks us to do more to help the
world's poor, we give him a cold shoulder?
Why are atrocities committed by the Northern
Alliance more acceptable than those committed by the Taliban? The answers
wouldn't have anything to do with our selfish, short-sighted national
interest, would it?
Women in Saudi Arabia aren't allowed
to drive cars, and women in Kuwait can't vote. Is that okay because those
countries provide us with oil?
For about $15 billion a year, the 125
million children worldwide who have never attended school could be educated,
says Oxfam International, a leading advocacy group for the poor. So why
is it so difficult to invest in something that could help prevent war
and so easy to spend that much and more to wage war?
Of the 183 nations represented at the
World Bank meeting in Ottawa on Sunday, all but one expressed support
for a substantial increase in aid to developing countries. That one was
us. Why? "Over the last 50 years, the world has spent an awful large amount
of money in the name of development without a great degree of success,"
said U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill.
He wouldn't be talking about the billions
in cash and armaments that we give to our dictator friends who -- surprise!
-- steal the money and become our enemies when we don't need them anymore?
Or those countries that receive the monetary
equivalent of straw and are then expected to spin gold?
Or those whom we help to develop products,
and then offer to buy the products at insultingly low prices if not ban
their importation altogether?
"We would agree with O'Neill that there
has been a lot of misuse of aid, but much of that is because it has been
given for political reasons," said Jo Marie Griesgraber, director of policy
for Oxfam America.
She cited Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire
as the worst example but could have included the Taliban and former U.S.
pals Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden as well.
U.S. aid contributions to the World Bank
total about 0.1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the lowest
among the Group of Seven major industrial countries.
And yet, we lecture the world about
combating terrorism -- you're either with us or against us, says President
Bush -- even though others have been fighting harder and longer, frequently
without our support.
At the World Bank meeting in Ottawa,
Britain's Brown proposed a $50 billion increase in aid provided annually
to developing countries in an effort to reach a U.N. goal of halving global
poverty by 2015.
The proposal was aimed at feeding the
hungry, reducing infant mortality and ensuring that children learn to
read. The amount suggested is less than the world coughed up virtually
overnight for the war in Afghanistan.
"We understand that for people to lead
decent lives, a lot will be up to them and their governments," Griesgraber
said. "But we also recognize that people need help. And if we have been
given more, it's been given to share." Half of the world's population
lives on less than $2 a day, while the richest 20 percent consumes more
than 80 percent of the world's resources, according to United Nations
Development Program statistics.
We profess to care about this inequity.
But when it comes to putting our money where our mouth is, we say, "Go
fly a kite."
Which raises a final question: If we
have no permanent values -- if we show concern for others only when there
is something in it for us, if friends and freedoms are made and discarded
as matters of convenience -- how can we expect to win a so-called war
of "good vs. evil"?
Here's a fact: Beards can grow back.
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