George W. Bush Beloved in Africa for AIDS Aid

(Hat tip: Opinionated Catholic)

From The Guardian (U.K.):

... The $15bn (£7.6bn) President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) is in its fifth year and has been hailed as a "revolution" that is transforming healthcare in Africa and has been praised as the most significant aid programme since the end of colonialism.

Bill Clinton's legacy in Africa was the debacle of Somalia and the abandonment of Rwanda's Tutsis to the 1994 genocide. But with Pepfar, Bush's primary contribution will be greatly extending millions of lives even though the programme has been criticised for emphasising abstinence in Aids education and using religious organisations to deliver care.

"This is the best thing that ever happened to the poor people I work with," said Edward Phillips, a Catholic priest overseeing the distribution of life-saving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) in Nairobi, Kenya. "It's one of the few times I've seen US government money really reach down to the poorest of the poor. It's kept a hell of a lot of people alive."

***
Bush confronted the pandemic under pressure from his then secretary of state, Colin Powell, who warned that Aids threatened to wipe out a large part of the working-age population of some African countries. He saw that as a national security issue. So did the CIA. Bush was also lobbied by American Christian evangelicals with strong and expanding ties to Africa, and conservative Republican senators usually instinctively hostile to foreign aid...

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(emphasis added)

My Comments:
The Guardian article is shockingly titled: "George Bush: a good man in Africa".

Not shockingly, however, the Democrats in Congress (as well as those running for President) want to water down Bush's program by emphasizing Planned Parenthood's agenda rather than that of the faith-based organizations currently aiding in providing HIV relief. How's Moloch Obama working out for you now, Professor Kmiec?