Blogs For Victory

And I mean that – you choose to hate him, because hating him fills some bizarre, twisted need in yourself. This likely the result of the overwhelming despair you ultimately feel in your lives because you either lack faith altogether, or believe that faith is trivial – so, lacking real hope or any real sense of love, you turn to hate to at least feel something…and President Bush has been your object of hatred, so much so that no matter how absurd the lies told about him, you believe every last one of them, no questions asked.

But here is the real President Bush – the President Bush we know and love, and who is known by those who don’t choose to hate:

…under his (President Bush’s) rule, he introduced the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), which has given shape to the fight against HIV/Aids in 13 focus countries in Africa and two outside the continent.

PEPFAR has been operational for five years on a budget worth $15 billion, and Bush recently asked the Congress to double that funding for another five years. The funding is the largest ever financial commitment from any donor for fighting a single disease.

There have been voices suggesting that the additional $30 billion Bush has requested Congress is little, but what is indisputable is that he has showed commitment to help save lives in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Obviously for Africans, any suggestion by a Congressman or Aids activist for an increment in PEPFAR money is mostly welcome.

Tatu Msangi, a single Tanzanian mother, took the story of the success of PEPFAR to Congress during a State of the Union address last month.

She is a living testimony of just how, through PEPFAR, the Bush administration has saved a life deep in a remote African village.

Msangi testified how despite living with HIV, she received the necessary counseling and Nevirapine (medication) during her pregnancy, and subsequently delivered a bouncing HIV-free baby girl. Now, her daughter Faith Mang’ehe has a future, and Msangi hope, thanks to Bush’s Emergency Plan.

This is not the only success story of its kind. In Rwanda and in other benefiting countries, such achievements are there although many remain publicly unnoticed.

“Thank you so much for the initiative. It has done so much for our people. It has given us a future,” Tanzanian President Jakaya Mrisho Kiwete told Bush on Sunday at a Dar es Salaam hospital which was partly built by the American people.

Under Bush presidency, a number of African countries have continued to benefit from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) although not many Africans have benefited yet due to a number of factors.

Africans will remember that in 2004, President Bush signed into law the AGOA Acceleration Act, which extended the legislation to 2015. The initiative has helped triple African total exports to the US since 2001 – the year Bush came to power.

Another groundbreaking initiative by Bush is the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) which he announced in March 2002.

Through MCA, the US has ‘rewarded’ poor countries that ‘govern justly, invest in their people, and open their economies to enterprise and entrepreneurship.’ Although the criteria could still be quietly disputed by some African governments, at least all well-intentioned developing countries in Africa will strive to qualify for MCA funding, thus improve their accountability and governance standards.

On Sunday, Bush signed $698 million Millennium Challenge Compact with Tanzania, a deal which will help the latter to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth through infrastructure investments in transport, energy and water. This grant is the largest in the history of the programme.

In addition, through the Africa Education Initiative which Bush launched in 2002, the US intends to distribute more than 15 million textbooks, train nearly a million teachers, and provide scholarships for 550,000 girls by 2010 in Africa.

On conflict-resolution, the US government has over the recent years seemed to act a bit more responsibly than in the past, a shift from its costly behaviour from, for instance, 1994 when the international community stood by as the Genocide unfolded and claimed at least one million Rwandans in 100 days.

Bush and his administration officials have repeatedly described the ongoing violence in Darfur as genocide, and helped train and equip African peacekeepers, including Rwandan soldiers, for the peacekeeping mission in the troubled western Sudan region. Although the violence still continues, there is evident political will from Bush’s government to help end the crisis.

Five years ago, the US government helped end the Liberian civil war, resulting in the eventual election of the first African woman president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Did you catch that, liberals? “First African woman president”…not fostered by Bill Clinton, Obama or any other “I feel your pain” or “hope-n-change” liberal, but fostered by a conservative, Christian who sees it as his moral duty to try and help the less fortunate – and not help by putting a bumper sticker on the Volvo or sending a donation to Obama, but helping by actually doing things for people. You liberals throw an aluminum can in the recycling bin and think you’ve done a good deed…well, there are far better deeds you could be doing, if you’d leave off the hate, ask for faith and start to love a bit.

The very same faith in God and love for fellow man which motivated President Bush to go out on a limb for Africa motivated him to go out on a limb for the people of Afghanistan, and the people of Iraq. There isn’t Good Bush and Evil Bush, dividing the President’s time…no, its all just President George W. Bush. While he was doing this you were calling him a war criminal, saying that he lied and people died, saying that he was doing this for oil, or just because he was cruel and/or stupid. I’m sorry to have to say this to you, my dear liberals, but you have acted the part of fool for 8 years, and wicked fool at that.

There is your grand chance at redemption, here – you can, simply by asking, stop hating and obtain the faith you need. Knock and the door shall be opened – and that is absolutely certain. All you have to do is work up the will to not want to hate this decent, patriotic man who did his best by you for the past 8 years. I’m not saying “support him”, I’m not saying, “become Republican” – I’m saying “stop hating”. You do that and the Obama years might be really the best years of your life – as you work hard for your cause, freed from hatred, bitterness and despair. Its your choice, and its your fair chance.