Like many Americans, international AIDS activists are beginning to miss President Bush. According to The East African, the Obama administration has failed to honor its funding commitments for the battle against AIDS:
Activists are expressing disappointment with President Barack Obama’s plans for the Aids treatment programme in Africa, charging that he has fallen short of the achievements of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
And they aren’t merely whispering among themselves. Gregg Gonsalves, a leading US anti-Aids campaigner, recently told a New York audience something they probably didn’t expect to hear:
I am about to say something shocking: I miss George W Bush …
Specifically, Gonsalves misses the White House’s committment to Pepfar, the Bush program that devoted serious money and resources to stemming the tide of HIV-related deaths on the African continent.
Obama, on the other hand, is following in the footsteps of our last Democrat president, Bill Clinton. Although it is rarely mentioned in media tales of the halcyon Clinton years, Slick Willy ignored the problem:
For most of its time in office, Clinton’s administration devoted little attention or resources to AIDS in Africa.
President Obama hasn’t been quite as bad as Clinton, but he has certainly welched on his promise to increase Pepfar funding. As is so often the case with this man, his actions have fallen far short of his rhetoric:
Obama pledged to increase Pepfar spending by $1b a year, but in his first budget, called for only $165m in new funds.
But Obama thinks he’s doing fine. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, he said he deserved a B+ for his first eleven months in office. That’s not the grade he’s getting from the international AIDS groups:
‘President Obama has all but failed to fulfil his commitments to wage an aggressive battle against global Aids,’ a coalition of Aids-focused groups declared last week, assigning him a grade of D+ for his performance to date.
Increasingly, the American people are coming to the same conclusion. Perhaps that’s because his “performance,” on AIDS and most other issues, has been just that—-a show. Pretty words with no substance.
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