Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [110]
Everybody knew Bush’s daddy had been an experienced diplomat and a skilled international player (except for the time he accidentally barfed on the prime minister of Japan—not his fault but still a foreign-policy low). Even those with doubts about Dubya figured at least he’d have his father’s advisers around him. (Foreign-policy experts noted an early warning flag in the selection, or self-selection, of Dick Cheney as vice president. In A World Transformed by Brent Scowcroft and George H. W. Bush, it is clear that Cheney, then secretary of defense, was the most hawkish of all Bush the Elder’s advisers.) A big believer in prudence and caution was Poppy Bush. Dubya’s handlers began home-schooling him in foreign policy in early 1999. He got foreign-policy tutorials from former secretary of state George Shultz, Condoleezza Rice, and even Carl Bildt, a former prime minister of Sweden, among others.
Beyond that, a credulous press kept reporting that he could speak Spanish (always says the same two sentences and then they cue the mariachis), and at least he appeared to be interested in Mexico. It could probably be proved by any decent historian that we’ve had presidents more ignorant about the rest of the world than that.
Until September 11, 2001, George Bush’s foreign policy was pretty simple—whatever Bill Clinton was for, he was against.
Bush’s first action, on his first day in office, was to reinstate the “global gag rule,” a ban against giving American foreign aid to any family-planning clinic that mentions—not performs but mentions—the word abortion. The ban applies even in countries where abortion is legal, and even when abortion services are paid for by non–United States funds. This was not the payoff of a long-promised campaign pledge; Bush had never even mentioned it. As a result, clinics in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa have been closed, leaving women without any health care, thus leading to a further spread of AIDS and, of course, the greatest irony, causing even more abortions because of more unwanted pregnancies.
The first inkling anyone had of what we were in for was on March 28, 2001, when Bush called off America’s participation in the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. He didn’t try to renegotiate or change what he didn’t like about the treaty, he simply pulled out and then tried to scuttle the whole thing. Since the United States, with 5 percent of the world’s population, produces 30 percent of the emissions that cause global warming, more than any other country, our withdrawal was devastating to the treaty. It’s usually silly to generalize about something as complex as world opinion, but there was no mistaking the global outrage over that decision. It set up Dubya Bush’s reputation as a unilateralist who doesn’t give a damn what the rest of the world thinks. His subsequent actions only sealed that impression.
In May 2001 Bush’s delegates to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights were so obstreperous and uncooperative that the Europeans refused to reelect the United States to the commission for the first time ever. In July Bush replaced the usual contingent from the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association who normally represent our country at the World Health Assembly. Instead, he dispatched Jeanne Head, a professional anti-abortion activist with the National Right to Life Committee, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America—the outfit founded by Beverly LaHaye, wife of the apocalyptic evangelist and author Tim LaHaye—and John Klink, a former chief negotiator for the Vatican. None of them is an expert on public health. The U.N.’s World Health Organization is widely credited with doing terrific work, including wiping out smallpox and other diseases. That Bush would have sent such an eccentric delegation to an international conference is