George W. Bush, the infamously anti-gay and neoconservative former U.S. president who invaded Iraq on a lie, has criticized congressional Republicans for threatening to defund the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a largely successful African HIV-prevention program that he launched back in 2003. “There is no program more pro-life” than PEPFAR, he wrote.
Though PEPFAR is estimated to have saved over 25 million lives, its funding is set to expire on September 30. Congressional Republicans are falsely claiming that the program promotes abortion and using its re-funding as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations. Republicans have threatened to defund the entire federal government at the end of the month unless they’re allowed to slash military diversity programs and military aid to Ukraine and to increase anti-immigration measures at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We are on the verge of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. To abandon our commitment now would forfeit two decades of unimaginable progress and raise further questions about the worth of America’s word,” Bush wrote in an a Wednesday opinion article in The Washington Post.
I mean, sure.
But are you petty enough to want the PEPFAR to die for all your issues with the guy?
You can want PEPFAR to survive and yet feel like W weighing in here is nakedly self-serving - it’s going to change the minds of exactly zero Republicans while improving his reputation with everyone else.
Personally, I want PEPFAR renewed, and when W dies I want him to be remembered as a war criminal and his death treated with all appropriate disrespect and malice; these comments do nothing for the former and slightly reduce the chances of the latter.
Thank you. Well said.
That’s what I’m saying haha. Everyone in here seems to be relishing in the fact that this program might go away simply because of who put it in place. I’m getting more and more convinced every day that the majority of people who left reddit for the Fediverse are young angry teenagers who think they’re sticking it to “the man”. So many comment sections look exactly like this; no nuance, only anger at anything remotely right wing. Even an HIV resource program is too far right for these people.
Never said I wanted it to die. But I don’t think anything GWB will do or say will sway anyone in the current party he helped build and enable. If he wanted to protect his legacy he should have ensured that truth, evidence and facts are the standards we use to make and maintain policy.
If he’s really interested maybe he should put some of the family wealth where his mouth is and start supporting democrats who would protect a program like this.
This is just like Mitt who has a lot to say about how things are going to shit but it’s just words and way too late. Fuck them all in a chicken basket.