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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Bush Tells USAID to Keep Democracy Focus
FrontLines: August 2008
President Bush addressed more than 600 diplomats, democracy activists, and USAID employees in the Ronald Reagan Building July 24 to hail the Agency’s work supporting freedom and democracy around the world during the seven years of his administration.
Administrator Henrietta Fore and President Bush at July 24 event at Ronald Reagan Building observing Captive Nations Week.
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"I want to thank all those who work for this very important Agency. I appreciate you being on the front lines of compassion and decency and liberty,” Bush told Administrator Henrietta Fore.
He spoke during Captive Nations Week, observed during July each year since it was set up in 1959 by President Eisenhower to take note of countries sup-pressed by Soviet communism.
Those countries are now independent. Bush said today’s
“captive nations” are now oppressed not by foreign powers but by their own dictators, such as Iran, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe. Even countries which the United States had good relations with, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and China, have been asked to improve human rights.
Bush said his administration has worked to spread democracy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon, and the Congo. He said Kuwait, Liberia, Morocco, and Pakistan have also advanced democracy.
USAID and the State Department played a central role in these efforts through more than $1 billion a year in support for elections, legislative training, the free press, civil society, and other elements vital for democracy.
Bush also looked to the future—beyond the final months of his second term—and called upon the next presidents to continue to support freedom around the world.
He said U.S. leaders since George Washington believed freedom was a universal cause shared by all mankind. Tying support for democracy to the U.S. battle against terrorists, Bush said: “To protect America, we must defeat the ideology of hatred by spreading the hope of freedom. Over the past seven years, this is exactly what we have done.”
He noted that “free societies don’t harbor terrorists, or launch unprovoked attacks on their neighbors.”
Foreign aid is vital to the advance of freedom since advances in health, education, and living standards help eliminate
the “hopelessness” that drives people to terrorism, he said. U.S. aid is also a moral issue, he said, in that “Americans believe that to whom much is given, much is required.”
President Bush moves through the crowd at Ronald Reagan
Building July 24.
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He insisted that democracy should remain an aid focus.
“In the past seven years we’ve more than doubled the federal budget for democracy and governance and human rights programs,” Bush said. “The challenge
for future presidents and future Congresses will be to ensure that America’s generosity remains tied to the promotion of transparency and accountability and prosperity.”
Summing up foreign assistance
achievements during his administration, Bush reported that 1.7 million people with HIV/AIDS receive medication through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and he predicted Congress would extend and double the program.
Citing Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug as saying
“you can’t build peace on empty
stomachs,” Bush said the United States has increased food aid by $1.8 billion. He also called on Congress to let USAID use 25 percent of food assistance funds to buy food in the developing world and stimulate local agriculture
there.
Finally, the president returned to his democracy theme, honoring activists from several repressive countries who were brought to Washington for this event. (A report on those activists is scheduled for the September issue of FrontLines.) ★
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