AIDS and national secuirty - yet another case of do good ism obscuring true priorities.
Even our Shrub has now conceded that the world AIDS plague is a threat to the US sufficient to look past biblical morality [this is not easy for a Republican office holder to do these days]. However, having proposed a $15 billion program [forget that he often doesn't fund his words] he will now waste most of it in Africa. Africa is mostly not our problem. We have few African immigrants. It would not be hard to reduce that number to almost zero. Just eliminate a few more air routes and refuse to take any African refugees claiming as we do with Haitians that they are all economic migrants. The whole fear of persecution thing is a Holocaust hangup anyway. If we took in everyone with legitimate fears you are probably talking over a billion people worldwide.
Next see: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/international/americas/18CARI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The Carib islands have an infection rate of 2.5% with some areas going over 10%. All these islands are grossly overpopulated. Those people come here. Our chances of stopping that in any major way are really very poor. Too big a citizen diaspora here to sponser, marry, etc. legals; to give shelter, support and first jobs to illegals until the next amnesty. Too long a Gulf Coast. Too much airline and boat traffic. The unwillingness of the US public to put up with the sort of national security police state it would take to stop this, especially as many of the islanders speak English and almost all the rest speak Spanish which are effectively our two national languages these days. Whatever diseases reach the islands in force will follow the people here. So let Europe deal with Africa while we work on the Carib basin.
Of course we won't. Inhuman. Cruel. Heartless. Then we will wonder in ten years why we are in a situation where the outbreak here cannot be contained either. Actions, consequnecs.
posted by scott 6:22 PM