The president's emergency AIDS fund is a step in the right direction.
I have to give President Bush kudos, humbly and with admiration. I missed the president's speech in 2003 when he called for a $15 billion fund to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. While Kofi Annan's World AIDS Fund didn't get the amount its supporters had hoped to receive from the president's anti-AIDS program, Mr. Bush, nevertheless, made a decision to focus the world's medical and government attention on the fight against AIDS in a nation that was burning to death from the scourge of AIDS. South Africa's president denies that AIDS is real. Therefore, its people die with horrible regularity. While I've been critical of Mr. Bush about the the war in Iraq, his economic programs, which hinge too tightly on tax cuts, and his international policies with regard to diplomacy (lacking for the most part).
And while the president responded to AIDS with a limited view based on personal influence from one of his spiritual advisors (the Rev. Franklin Graham), he did respond, which is more than even President Clinton did during his tenure in the White House.
So Mr. president, I salute you for your courage and caring, at least initially. However, please back off the schizophrenic moralization about abstinence versus condoms. Why are you so hooked to abstinence when you KNOW it's not realistic or even practical to impose your moral edicts on people who're dying from a medical problem. It's disingenuine to offer someone life while at the same time requiring a pledge from the needy to align with the giver's moral philosophy. Would Jesus Christ have required abstinence BEFORE providing relief from suffering? Would Christ have denied the miracle of health from a dying man or woman if those men and women did not embrace Christ's moral viewpoint?
I wonder.