Unleashing weapons of mass salvation

I happen to agree that the world must unite to make sure Iraq’s Saddam Hussein is unable to develop weapons of mass destruction. Of even greater priority is the need for the world to unite to disarm North Korea of the nuclear weapons it admits it has. But doing both won’t usher the world in an era of everlasting peace.

Destroying weapons of mass destruction isn’t going to work if that’s all America’s George W plans to do. We must unleash weapons of mass salvation, as American economist Jeffrey Sachs puts it. Otherwise, people must continue to worry about being annihilated in a cloud of radioactive dust. In so many words, the American economist is saying that President Bush has his priorities wrong.

"While the Bush administration is prepared to spend $100 billion to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, it has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2 percent of that sum ($200 million) this year on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria." We might, as Sachs suggests in an article in The Economist, actually get somewhere in making this planet a safer and more hospitable home.

As you might have guessed, Sachs defines weapons of mass salvation as "the arsenal of life-saving vaccines, medicines and health interventions, emergency food aid and farming technologies that could avert literally millions of deaths each year in the wars against epidemic disease, drought and famine." President Bush and the Republican leadership in Washington today must devote a lot more time to mobilizing weapons of mass salvation if they want the war on terrorism to work.

It isn’t as if the Republicans in Washington have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. They could have learned a lot from history. Mr. Sachs cites the lessons taught by "the great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill." Both, unlike Bush and Blair, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation.

"Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity. Roosevelt not only talked of Freedom from Fear but also Freedom from Want. One of the reasons the Bush administration is losing the battle for the world’s hearts and minds is precisely that it fights only the war on terror, while turning a cold and steely eye away from the millions dying of hunger and disease."

Last Thursday, CNN reported the launching in Jakarta of a State Department advertising campaign designed to win the hearts and minds of Muslims by showing a kinder and gentler face of America. It must be the handiwork of a Madison Avenue hotshot appointed by Mr. Bush to market America to the world as if it were a potato chip or a fast food chain.

The CNN report said the campaign was pre-tested by some US embassies in Muslim countries and got a negative feedback. In fact, the backlash was severe enough for some to recommend trashing the campaign. But they launched it anyway in Indonesia, after "tweaking" it a bit based on the results of their focused group interviews.

It is too early to declare the campaign a total failure. But it isn’t too early to predict that it isn’t going to go over big among the target audience. Sure, it is a truthful campaign in so far as religious freedom in America is concerned. But the basic rights as guaranteed by the American Constitution are not the issues at stake. More important in winning the world’s hearts and minds is the behavior of America’s leaders vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

Our very own President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo voiced that expectation and frustration in the recently concluded summit conference of Asia Pacific leaders. She asked America to walk the talk. America should not talk of free trade and practice protectionism. America should not talk of open market and open skies and practice traditional strong arm trade protectionism to the point of causing millions in the Third World to go hungry.

While America, the world’s only remaining superpower, can’t help playing the world policeman’s role, it should also play its ordained role as the world’s social worker, helping those in dire need to survive and catch up. Unleashing the big stick all the time in terms of unilateral actions against the consensus of the world community irritates not just the Third World but even their closest of allies.

Just last week, Canada issued a travel advisory for some of its citizens against travel to the United States until such time as, in the words of a Canadian official, sanity prevails once more in Washington. And there’s where we find ourselves today, caught in the crossfire of a war on terrorism where every salvo from each side terrorizes the rest of us.

One thing with America is that it is able to produce at crucial moments in history, a Washington, a Lincoln, a Franklin Roosevelt and a John Kennedy when it needed a kind of leadership that’s at the same time inspiring and humanistic. George W. Bush must have been foisted on the world by clueless voters in Florida for a reason that is beyond us now.

Terrorism isn’t just about nukes and anthrax. Nor is it about Fundamentalist Islam. It is about food, medicines and trade. It is the economy, stupid. It is about a world economy that is more equitable and just.

Journ School

I caught this photo release of mass com students of Palawan State University visiting our offices. Their field trip gave them an opportunity to see how journalism works. But that’s not the point I want to raise briefly today. My question is, why is government spending scarce resources offering a course that is next to useless?

State universities should have the primary mission of providing access to education to as broad a base as possible of our people so that they can break out of the cycle of poverty. Tell me, how can these poor kids break out of poverty by studying journalism?

There is an over supply of mass com graduates, yet most are ill prepared to be journalists. I have learned from experience that even the graduates of the best schools only wasted their time and their parents’ money.

I was just reading an article in Slate, an Internet magazine, that reported how even the great Columbia School of Journalism is in the midst of trying to decide if it makes sense to have a school of journalism at all. If I could do things over again, I wouldn’t take up journalism in college. I remedied that somehow by taking graduate courses in economics.

Based on my experience of over 30 years in the field of communication, the best journalists are those who took up such courses as English, Economics, Political Science or Commerce. It may be harmless for rich kids in Ateneo to take up Mass Com or Com Arts. . . but poor students from a state university in Palawan? The taxpayers and the parents of those students got gypped, plain and simple. Such utter waste of scarce resources we can ill afford!.

Course offerings of state colleges and universities must be reviewed and rationalized in the light of national needs and realities. If the bureaucrats won’t do it, Congress should do it for them in terms of budget cuts.

Repossess

Martin was known among his friends for the punctuality with which he sent his wife her alimony payment each month. When asked the reason for his haste, he shivered and explained: "I’m afraid that if I should ever fall behind in my payments she might decide to repossess me."

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]