Here in Kinshasa, we met Emilie Lunda, 25, who had nearly died during childbirth a few days earlier. Doctors saved her life, but her baby died. And she is still recuperating in a hospital and doesn’t know how she will pay the bill.
“I didn’t want to get pregnant,” Emilie told us here in the Congolese capital. “I was afraid of getting pregnant.” But she had never heard of birth control.
In rural parts of Congo Republic, the other Congo to the north, we found that even when people had heard of contraception, they often regarded it as unaffordable.
Most appalling, all the clinics and hospitals we visited in Congo Republic said that they would sell contraceptives only to women who brought their husbands in with them to prove that the husband accepted birth control.
“Making contraception available to all these women worldwide would cost less than $4 billion, Guttmacher said in an important study published last year. That’s about what the United States is spending every two weeks on our military force in Afghanistan.”
COMMENT: I’d rather spend the 4 billion every two weeks in Afghanistan, if our national interests demand, than in Africa where they don’t. If Afghanistan does not necessitate such expenditures, I can think of far better places to make them, at home!
Further, in the aftermath of the Cold War era, it’s about time we re-examine the utility of both our foreign aid outlays and our heavy contributions through UN developmental organizations. With severe trade imbalances, the weakening of American competitiveness abroad, terrible deficit spending, and poor results to show for our efforts anyway, its time to pull the plug on the type of foreign assistance suggested by this author.
Does anyone think that the widespread distribution of the contraceptive pill in the Congo would not lead to a massive increase in sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. Also, I thought there was a consensus that population control was not the way out of poverty. To think that 4 billion dollars worth of contraceptive pills will solve the problem of poverty in the Congo is to exhibit an appalling poverty of spirit and imagination.
While training in NFP (and conversion of attitude) should be a long-term goal, in the short-term it’s worth remembering that much of the Congo is still a battlefield where systematic rape is being used as an instrument of war. It’s easy to pour scorn on those in the West proposing such a course; could we treat the victims so, if faced with them?
There should be a difference between how we regard abortion and how we regard contraceptives (at least those that are not abortifacients), even if we have reservations about the latter.
But why is it our national business? (Not saying that we couldn’t/shouldn’t help via private charities) Where in the US Constitution is there a right for the Federal Government to take money from my family and send it to Africa to pay for contraceptives so that the residents there may enjoy unfettered intimate relations at the expense of my family? Do you think that is what Adams or Jefferson had in mind? Really?
Sick and Tired,
If your comment was to me, I would reiterate my point that much of the “unfettered intimate relations” in the Congo is coerced. I wasn’t really addressing whether it should be a state or private initiative.
On that point, however, I would note that the claim that the West bears no part in the present disorder of Africa is debatable. We decided – wisely or unwisely – to meet the danger of Communist subversion of Africa by backing groups who did not enjoy support from Moscow or Cuba, be it the EPLF in Ethiopia, Mobutu in Zaire or UNITA in Angola.
Were they preferable to they alternatives? Probably, but that doesn’t alter the fact that today Eritrea is one of the most repressive (and anti-Christian) states in the region and Angola and the Congo are awash with the munitions left over from decades-long conflict. Furthermore, there are multinational companies (not all of them Chinese) who are happy to take oil and minerals produced in those countries, despite the character of the regimes that head them. Even if we decide to adopt an isolationist approach to foreign policy, is there no responsibility to first clear up some of the consequences of respecting the domino theory?
It reminds me a little of that period right after the German surrender and prior to the adoption of the Marshall Plan when the British public were shocked to discover that supplies from America that had previously been arriving under Lend Lease agreements had, almost overnight, become subject to demands for cash on the nail. Not the happiest day for the Special Relationship.
Dear Jeremy,
Think I am with ‘Sick and Tired’ on this one. Whatever the uhappy consequences of our Cold War policies in Africa, they were carried out in our national interests, within the Cold War context. As an old Cold War warrior in the Foreign Service, my colleagues and I fought the evil empire at every turn. Now, unless we are looking at the inheritors of Nazi Germany, nations normally do not look backward and make corrections– not even post 1945 Japan. Nor should they as a general proposition; right working governments work for their people and are not driven in any major way by sentimentalism, guilt over the past or by idealistic ventures.
Most of what we view as Africa’s problems are self-inflicted. They stem from culture and unimaginable corruption, factors that are often and unintentionally fed by outside idealists and ethno-centered officials armed with taxpayers dollars. Not even prime examples of western sacrifice and giving–the British Empire comes to mind– were sustainable. Nor did this carrying of the “White Man’s Burden” win the gratitude and following of the millions it was intended to help.
I would think that with all of our national troubles, correcting percieved Cold War mistakes and striving to overturn the destructive aspects of African culture and practice should be very low on our list of taxpayers’ things to do. Best. Dick
Dick,
A question. As a former diplomat, do you think it is possible to have a moral (from a Christian standpoint) foreign policy? I’m not being snide; I’m genuinely curious.
I’m can’t help thinking of the [i]Yes Prime Minister[/i] episode where Hacker loftily observes “We should always fight for the weak against the strong.” “Oh really,” responds Sir Humphrey, “well why don’t we send our troops to fight the Russians in Afghanistan?”
“Well . . . the Russians are too strong!”
Jeremy,
Great question. Looking back on it, my Christian faith was pretty well restricted to relations with family, friends and fellow believers– to private dealings, in other words. Never mixed Christianity up with ‘affairs of state.’ For those, my moral underpinnings came from a secular faith in the founding fathers, from my determination to give the taxpayers value and in the belief that we were locked in a struggle for survival with a truly evil power. Even then, my views on the utility and rightness of foreign assistance were shaped by that context.
In that public and diplomatic context, honestly can’t say that I treated everyone with reverence, humility and gentleness. Often, far from it. Otherwise, I had no doubt, national disaster (or my small part in the making of it) was sure to follow.
Was it Lord Acton who said: “if we did for ourselves what we do for our countries, what scoundrals we would be!”
As for “Yes, Prime Minister:” despite Hacker’s efforts to put a lofty gloss on everything he can, it is nothing more than gloss. Far better than his fretting political superiors, Hacker knows the way of the world, knows exactly what he is looking at. That’s how my State colleagues and I tried our best to be. Best. Dick
I appreciate the response, though I must admit it also depresses me.
Just as a postscript, I came across this [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8682505.stm]feature[/url] the other day.
Now I imagine that, at least from a diplomatic point of view, General Richards did everything wrong and (as he says) if it had turned into a quagmire, he would have had his head handed to him on a plate. But it raises an interesting question. Was he wrong to do it?
I’m not necessarily asking the posters here, but it’s worth pondering.
Jeremy– Cannot at all judge that he was wrong. Gen. Richards was on the ground, knew better than anyone back home what he was facing and the chances of success were he to step in. He also must have been in agreement with those back home that the seizure of Freetown, capital of the UK’s oldest colonial area in West Africa, was not in the national interest. So, Richards acted, guided by his best estimate of the situation. He succeeded, so he was right. That is the good diplomat’s reasoning.
The good Christian’s reasoning, I suppose, would be based largely along personal and humanitarian lines, not upon best estimates: because it was right for him to resist the blood-thirsty rebels, and protect the weak, he would have been right to stay even had he lost the lives of his men and all the others he was tasked to bring out.
The implications of this latter reasoning are huge: the role of the nation state, not as defender of its continuation, of its citizens and interests, but as martyr! I am no Bible expert, but think that no where did Jesus, or subsequent church fathers, equate what is expected of states to that which is expected of individuals!
Best. Dick