It's relatively easy to help the people in places like Botswana. Their governments are functional, and are willing and able to cooperate in providing aid to their citizens. Thus, not much is written about aid to Botswana.
It's the old story, nobody writes about the planes that don't crash.
Botswana is a humanitarian crisis for social reasons, primarily an incredibly high HIV rate. The economy is surprisingly resilient. If HIV could be prevented from spreading further, Botswana has potential for a good future.
Iraq, on the other hand, was a humanitarian crisis for political reasons. The country has sufficient wealth to provide for the needs of its citizens, but a dictator, Saddam Hussein, interdicted that for reasons of self-aggrandizement.
In the parlance of foreign policy wonks, regardless of whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat, we call countries which suffer these political humanitarian crises "failed states."
The very fact that you use to revile Bush, the lack of WMD in Iraq, I would call the best evidence that Iraq was a failed state. The Iraqi people suffered through embargoes and interdictions and even war in order to prop up Saddam Hussein's ego. Rather than allow the UN inspectors access to the information they needed to give Iraq a clean bill of health, he stonewalled, temporized and obstructed.
That was insane. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, maybe millions, suffered privation, in order to assuage his ego. |
