Obama, Hope and Humanitarian Relief
Just a quick post, after spending the morning - part of the morning - standing out on the Mall, listening to Obama's inauguration address. Now back in a friend's apartment, reveling in the warmth of no longer being outside and listening to a youtube clip of Obama's speech from the night of the Iowa primary, over a year ago. The Iowa speech remains my favorite, especially the line that:
"[H]ope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path.
It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it."
A line that still brings tears to my eyes - because it forces me to re-examine my own cynicism, my own resignation, or at least occasional resignation; the cynical belief that the situation in places like Congo or Darfur will never much improve.
A cynicism that is, at best, corrosive, and at worst paralyzing. And then I hear the line that something better can await, despite all evidence to the contrary, and it does give me hope.
In today's speech, Obama again set forth a vision of what America was, and could be; a vision that encompasses America's role in providing relief to the poorest of the poor:
Foreign assistance was one of the few not-horrible legacies of the Bush Administration. Under Bush, US develoment assistance more than doubled, from $9.5 billion to over $22.7 billion, including such new initiatives as the Millenium Challenge Corporation and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Early in his campaign, Obama promised to double foreign assistance, to $50 billion - yet with the financial crisis, this is no longer realistic. Just a few months ago, Vice Presient Biden announced that "the one thing we might have to slow down is a commitment we made to double foreign assistance."
At the very least, however, if Obama hopes to maintain his pledge to "nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds", he should continue funding foreign assistance at the levels set by the Bush Administration.
Yet equally important is the need to reform how US foreign assistance is delivered - twenty-eight government agencies currently provide foreign assistance, without any effective coordination or oversight. To make matters worse, the legislative framework for US foreign assistance is increasingly incoherent; today, according to Oxfam, the Foreign Assistance Act incorporates 33 different goals, 75 priority areas, and 247 directives.
Upon taking office, President Obama should take three key steps to change this situation:
1. Name an experienced and respected USAID Administrator and give responsibility for coordinating foreign aid programs across government to a senior National Security Council official;
2. Task these two officials with leading the development of the first-ever National Strategy for Global Development, to bring vision to U.S. efforts and show the public how foreign aid programs help us reach key foreign policy goals; and,
3. Work with Congress to rewrite the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which has not been updated in over 20 years.
Though I love the Iowa speech, hope alone is not enough. The Obama administration must take the necessary actions to back its words.
[Photo of Obama inauguration from the New York Times]
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