Opinion
 

U.S. foreign policy fuels fire of fear, hate

By Warren Domask

All UH students probably know what AIDS is and how dangerous it is to every American. What most Americans won't remember is another gargantuan outbreak of a horrible illness that has been almost eradicated in the United States. Polio swept through America in the first part of the 20th century, crippling scores of people and shutting down many aspects of public life. Community centers, pools and parks shut down for months at a time because of one thing: pure, unadulterated fear.

A streak of tragic luck blessed America when the disease smote Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1921. Soon UNICEF came into being, and the March of Dimes campaign began raising money that eventually led to the American defeat of polio. A ripple effect began traveling through the world, and many more humans were spared. One American president saved many lives, albeit unintentionally.

A sick irony is now occurring in today's world politics, as this disease -- once predicted to be defeated by the end of this year -- has again reared its ugly head in the African country of Nigeria. Neither environmental factors nor unsafe medical practices are to blame for the outbreak in this underdeveloped country. Instead, Nigerians are simply refusing to take the vaccine. Instead of fear of the disease, like that which plagued America in the last century, they are sincerely afraid of medicine coming from an America that is headed by George W. Bush.

It would obviously be irresponsible to claim that Bush is directly to blame for the spread of polio, just as Roosevelt cannot be credited with directly curing polio. Still, there is something seriously wrong when American aid programs are seen as being so tainted that people are less afraid of a deadly disease than they are of the people generously offering a cure.

Under presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton, there was massive resentment of America (as is only natural when you are the most powerful country on earth), but despite voluminous hatred, the Third World was at least willing to accept help. It is important to point out that the Nigerian refusal of vaccines wasn't a measure of protest against America; it was a measure of fear that Americans want to kill them with vaccines, and Iraq is cited as the basis of that fear.

Disturbingly, this shouldn't be seen as a great surprise. After all, this is the same administration that avidly dropped cluster bombs over Afghanistan -- cluster bombs that looked virtually identical to air-dropped packets of humanitarian aid -- and frequently littered the ground with unexploded ordnance. For those interested, many human rights groups raised hell over children who mistook bombs for food and died in a shower of shrapnel.

To show its human side, the Bush administration proved it cared by canceling the food-drop program. The newer models of cluster bombs tend to look more like racquetballs, large Pez dispensers and other assorted toys of all sorts of shapes and colors.

There is more, of course. For example, to increase the comfort of the commander-in-chief, the city of Istanbul was shut down for three days, turning the entire area into a sweltering open-air prison. Ten million Turkish citizens -- five times the population of Houston -- were left to boil in the Mediterranean heat, but on the plus side, the Bush administration's motorcade did not have to see the enormous protests that massed at the fringes of the roadblocks.

Of the things America can do to woo the hearts and minds of the Arab world, locking them out of their cities is very low on the list. Unfortunately, when it comes to the long list of things a chief executor shouldn't do, America's current leader has done them consistently around the world.

It is a shame that the world's greatest government can't be expected to hold itself to a higher standard, but this is no longer the case -- at least not for the 40-odd percent of the U.S. population that still supports the current administration.

Every person who gets pushed over the line of resenting America's power to actually hating America is a potential threat to our lives. Every politically insensitive step stirs up hornets' nests that endanger the lives of U.S. soldiers and civilians, whether they're trying to make the world a better place or just live out their lives.

On 9/11, 19 people hated America so much that they killed thousands. More suffering and death will occur at the hands of hate-hardened terrorists, and that hateful disease will infest the United States through its unilateral executive misdirection.

Some people, our president apparently among them, would like to view these terrorists as beings of pure evil with no motivation beyond their service to the dark forces. It has to be more than that. If we can prevent sowing the seeds of hatred in foreign hearts by tweaking a few small measures like those mentioned above, it would certainly be worth it.

American foreign policy has gone horribly wrong, and as the generation that will inherit a world of fear, full of those who hate us, we need to take responsibility and fix it before it's too late.

Domask, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at dccampus@mail.uh.edu.