05=NOV-A-6
KINDRED SPIRITS SINGING THE SAME SONG
It was great talking with you today. Thanks so much for your time. I look
forward to furthering our conversations. Here is the article I mentioned
that appeared in the Globe. Very interesting.
Regards,
Ron
The cure for tyranny
By Tommy G. Thompson
| October 24, 2005 |
AS IRAQIS voted on their draft constitution last
week, President Bush
praised their commitment to peace and declared: ''We
believe, and the Iraqis
believe, the best way forward is through the
democratic process. Al Qaeda
wants to use their violent ways to stop the march of
democracy because
democracy is the exact opposite of what they believe
is right."
But if we have any hope of spreading democracy and
ending tyranny in every
corner of the globe, it is vital that we use all of
the weapons of freedom
at our disposal. That includes our most effective
arsenal against terrorists
and the forces of oppression: education, compassion,
and medicine. That is
the principle at the heart of what I call ''medical
diplomacy" -- the
winning of hearts and minds of people in the Middle
East, Asia,
elsewhere by exporting medical care, expertise, and
personnel to help those
who need it most.
Medical diplomacy must be made a significantly
larger part of our foreign
and defense policy, as we clean up from costly and
deadly wars in
and defeat the terrorists by enhancing our medical
and humanitarian
assistance to vulnerable countries. By delivering
hope we will deliver
freedom.
With my own eyes, I have seen people respond
favorably to
provided life-saving care, trained doctors, and
restocked hospitals in
war-torn
acts of compassion destroy the rhetoric of
terrorists, while giving future
generations hope for a healthy and free future.
These are the battlefields
where we will be able to win the war on terror -- at
a relatively low cost.
For example, the
Balkhi Women's Hospital in
rebuild the hospital, train doctors, and provide
women medical care in a
country where the Taliban would not allow women to
be treated by male
doctors or even be doctors themselves. The result:
Women and children are
receiving quality healthcare in a nation that once
saw nearly one in five
children die at childbirth.
Compare that $5 million investment with the $8
billion the
spent on the Comanche helicopter before abandoning
the program altogether
last year. Think of the good we could have spread in
billion. Far from a criticism of the president's
foreign policy, medical
diplomacy is a necessary and vital -- although
underused -- complement to
our approach to
The United States couldn't have rebuilt hospitals in
Afghanistan without
first wiping out the Taliban. We couldn't have
increased spending on Iraqi
healthcare from $15 million in the last year of
Saddam Hussein's rule to
roughly $1 billion without first toppling Saddam --
just as many of our
European allies would not be our allies today if it
were not for the
Marshall Plan following World War II.
But that is why we must redouble our efforts to
spread American generosity
and compassion, in an attempt to head off future
wars -- or even the need
for future wars. This is the heart of medical
diplomacy. Four remarkable
years of overseas travel as secretary of health and
human services taught me
that you don't have to share a man's faith to help
save his life. You don't
have to speak a woman's language to cure her
illnesses. You don't have to
understand a town's culture to bring it fresh water.
But you do have to understand your place in the
world and your
responsibility to love your neighbors, whether they
live down the street or
across the ocean. They say that good fences make
good neighbors, and maybe
they do. But what I've learned is that good medicine
makes better neighbors,
and it makes good foreign policy, too.
Tommy G. Thompson is a former health and human
services secretary and
chairman of the Deloitte Center for Health
Solutions. He is teaching a
course on medical diplomacy at Harvard's Kennedy
School of Government this
fall.
Brigadier General Ron Sconyers (USAF, Ret.)
Chief Executive Officer, Physicians For Peace
229 W. Bute St, #200
Norfolk, VA 23510
757-625-7569, ext. 317
www.physiciansforpeace.org
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