December 1, 2008

W’s Nobel Cause: AIDS Fight Should Earn Bush the Peace Prize

I don’t know how you’ve been celebrating World AIDS Day (observed annually on December 1). But for me, it’s been all about promoting George Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Say what?

George W. Bush – of the subterranean approval ratings? The “illegitimate leader?” “Pathological liar?” “Iraq war criminal?” Gitmo “jailer?” “Boudoir eavesdropper?” “Torturer?” “Tyrant?”

Yeah, that’s the guy.

Because that litany of fond descriptions for W leaves out “president” – as in the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” known more affectionately as PEPFAR.

And the FAR in that acronym could well stand for FAR-sighted, FAR-reaching – and a FAR cry from politics as usual.

I mean, here’s a novel way for a Christian conservative Republican president to expend his political capital. Propose a $15-billion foreign-aid program to address a condition much of his base considers the rightful Wrath of God for sinful behavior – or WOG, as we used to shorthand the theory on the Hill (with no allusion intended to any ethnic group).

Not to mention the inconvenient truth that the nations hardest hit by the disease are in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean – regions with all the strategic importance, in the eyes of Red State America, of Lower Slobbovia.

But to the Compassionate-Conservative-in-Chief, the AIDS pandemic presented a cause above politics – the value of human lives.

Yeah, you remember them. Human lives. They used to mean something before Roe v. Wade and the advent of eco-alarmism – in the throes of which the Earth First! organization newsletter once suggested that "if radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS.”

Heart-warming.

Contrast the opinion of the panel of world-leading economists that came together in 2004 as the Copenhagen Consensus. They considered the fight against HIV/AIDS to be the absolutely top potential investment among 10 they considered for solving the world’s problems – with benefits 40 times the expenditure.

So what have been the benefits of the visionary and compassionate investment birthed by the 43rd president?

How about 33 million HIV testing and counseling sessions? Efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in close to 13 million pregnancies? The actual prevention of nearly 200,000 infant infections? Care for six-and-a-half million people – including 2.7 million orphans and vulnerable children?

Most important, life-saving antiretroviral treatment for approximately one and three quarter million men, women and young people?

Hey, Al “Oscar” Gore won the Peace Prize – frequently awarded on the basis of humanitarian achievements – for “his strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books (that) has strengthened the struggle against climate change." A struggle that has placed Gore on the side of some other great humanitarians. Like one who suggested “a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of six-year-old children to Asian brothels."

Or the do-gooder who opined that "to feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem." Or the bleeding heart who insisted that "human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." Not to mention the Good Samaritan who declared that “eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems."

Speaking of balance, of the ideas weighed by the Copenhagen Consensus’s assembled sages four years back, guess which took up the rear among their “Bad Projects?” The three climate-change proposals. Oops.

Thank God that instead of this ilk of peacemaker, the executive power of the United States government for the last eight years has been in the hands of a leader who believes: “There is no way to quantify PEPFAR's greatest achievement – the spread of hope.”

“Spreading hope,” rhapsodizes soon-to-be Private Citizen Bush, “is in our nation's security interests, because the only way our enemies can recruit people to their dark ideology is to exploit despair. And spreading hope is in our moral interests – because we believe that to whom much is given, much is required.”

And thank God for a leader who backed up that belief by proposing and signing a reauthorization of PEPFAR that will more than triple America’s commitment to the cause of battling AIDS and related illnesses globally over the next five years.

The president’s profile in political courage in envisioning a world free of HIV/AIDS – and the fruits of his extraordinary initiative – have provided something to celebrate even in the face of global tragedy on World AIDS Day 2008. But let’s hope the Peace Prize Committee has the same regard for saving lives as it does for saving trees – and will vouchsafe us not only a new grounds for celebration, but also a wholly new category of description for W by next December 1.