The cure for tyranny
AS IRAQIS voted on their draft constitution last week, President Bush praised their commitment to peace and declared: ''We believe, and the Iraqis believe, the best way forward is through the democratic process. Al Qaeda wants to use their violent ways to stop the march of democracy because democracy is the exact opposite of what they believe is right."
But if we have any hope of spreading democracy and ending tyranny in every corner of the globe, it is vital that we use all of the weapons of freedom at our disposal. That includes our most effective arsenal against terrorists and the forces of oppression: education, compassion, and medicine.
That is the principle at the heart of what I call ''medical diplomacy" -- the winning of hearts and minds of people in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and elsewhere by exporting medical care, expertise, and personnel to help those who need it most.
Medical diplomacy must be made a significantly larger part of our foreign and defense policy, as we clean up from costly and deadly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. America has the best chance to win the war on terror and defeat the terrorists by enhancing our medical and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable countries. By delivering hope we will deliver freedom.
With my own eyes, I have seen people respond favorably to America when we provided life-saving care, trained doctors, and restocked hospitals in war-torn Afghanistan, AIDS-ravaged Botswana, and storm-soaked Haiti. Our acts of compassion destroy the rhetoric of terrorists, while giving future generations hope for a healthy and free future.
These are the battlefields where we will be able to win the war on terror -- at a relatively low cost.
For example, the United States spent $5 million last to refurbish the Rabia Balkhi Women's Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan. This investment allowed us to rebuild the hospital, train doctors, and provide women medical care in a country where the Taliban would not allow women to be treated by male doctors or even be doctors themselves. The result: Women and children are receiving quality healthcare in a nation that once saw nearly one in five children die at childbirth.
Compare that $5 million investment with the $8 billion the United States spent on the Comanche helicopter before abandoning the program altogether last year. Think of the good we could have spread in Afghanistan and Iraq, Botswana and Uganda, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic with that $8 billion.
Far from a criticism of the president's foreign policy, medical diplomacy is a necessary and vital -- although underused -- complement to our approach to Afghanistan and Iraq.
The United States couldn't have rebuilt hospitals in Afghanistan without first wiping out the Taliban. We couldn't have increased spending on Iraqi healthcare from $15 million in the last year of Saddam Hussein's rule to roughly $1 billion without first toppling Saddam -- just as many of our European allies would not be our allies today if it were not for the Marshall Plan following World War II.
But that is why we must redouble our efforts to spread American generosity and compassion, in an attempt to head off future wars -- or even the need for future wars.
This is the heart of medical diplomacy. Four remarkable years of overseas travel as secretary of health and human services taught me that you don't have to share a man's faith to help save his life. You don't have to speak a woman's language to cure her illnesses. You don't have to understand a town's culture to bring it fresh water.
But you do have to understand your place in the world and your responsibility to love your neighbors, whether they live down the street or across the ocean. They say that good fences make good neighbors, and maybe they do. But what I've learned is that good medicine makes better neighbors, and it makes good foreign policy, too.
Tommy G. Thompson is a former health and human services secretary and chairman of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. He is teaching a course on medical diplomacy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government this fall.
