Clean Drinking Water
It’s true: terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have attracted a very loyal constituency because they also build schools and roads and hospitals.
I’ve often wondered why can’t we do that too? Why can’t we build a constituency among the people of the Middle East for democracy by improving infrastructure instead of destroying it?
Recently Michael Moore took it a step further:
AMY GOODMAN: Michael, your sixth presidential decree for the next president’s first ten days is to defeat al-Qaeda and the next generation of America-haters by building wells.
MICHAEL MOORE: Well, there’s over a billion people on this planet that don’t have access to clean drinking water. You know, what if we made it an American mission to make sure that the entire third world had clean drinking water? One of the statistics I read was it would cost about $10 per person in the third world of people who don’t have the clean drinking water right now. So, that’s–geez, that’s $10 times a billion people? $10 billion. That’s just October in Iraq.
For the money that we’re spending in Iraq in October, we could provide clean drinking water to most of the people that don’t have it. And I, as an American, would rather be known by the people who are struggling to survive in the third world as the country that gave them clean drinking water or gave them other things that they need to help them in their daily existence to survive. I think most Americans would rather be known for that. Instead, we’re known as the invaders and the occupiers and the people who prop up the regimes in these countries, and I’m tired of that. I’m really tired of it.
I’d vote for that in a heartbeat.
