No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

15 BUSH THE AFRICAN

DESPITE THE CONTROVERSY, we were enjoying the chance to highlight the President’s already exceptional record in Africa. We began the trip in Senegal, where we visited Goree Island, the port from which slaves had been shipped to the Americas. It was a deeply emotional experience for me as I walked through the archway that had led the slaves to the transit ship. I couldn’t help but think of Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” And I couldn’t help but wonder if any of my ancestors had crossed over from here into the tragic life ahead of them. I listened as the President acknowledged Africa’s contribution to the birth of the United States of America. “The stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America,” he said.

We had all looked forward to the trip, most especially the President, who’d been taken with the continent from the very beginning of the administration. I’d introduced the President to Jendayi Frazer, who’d become special assistant for African affairs for the NSC. Jendayi made a convincing case that Africa could be more than a charity case, and we set out to create a well-rounded policy that would deal with conflict resolution, economic development, and democratization. The events of September 11, 2001, added counterterrorism cooperation to that list. The President liked the African leaders and met with them frequently, seeing twenty-five African heads of state from 2001 to 2003 alone.

The President believed too that the United States had a special responsibility to show compassion toward those who were less fortunate. Some have said that he was convinced of this by his ties to the evangelical Christian community, and to a certain extent this is true. Yet he also believed that Africans bore at least some responsibility both for their dire conditions and for finding a way out of them. We set out to build the relationship with Africa as one of partnership, not patronage. That often set the President at odds with his European colleagues, particularly French President Jacques Chirac, who held a more paternalistic view. Chirac once told the President that we couldn’t condemn corruption in Africa because “we,” meaning the West, were responsible for it. The President reminded Chirac that the United States didn’t have a colonial past in Africa and in any case the fight against corruption was on behalf of Africans, not the West.

The exchange had taken place in 2002 at the same contentious G8 meeting where the fate of Yasir Arafat had been discussed. The President had, three months before, announced a huge increase in U.S. foreign assistance to poor nations. But there was a condition: the money would go to countries that were governing wisely, investing in their people, and promoting economic freedom. The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), which was to be administered by a new government entity, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, was an approach that addressed the well-founded concern that so much money had gone “down a rat hole” over decades of foreign assistance. The President’s address at the Monterrey development summit in Mexico in March 2002 gave us an opportunity to redefine the bargain: we would provide new and substantial resources, but the recipients would be those who could spend the money well. We thought of the MCA not as rewarding good behavior, though it did. The point was that countries would never develop without good governance and a fight against corruption. Foreign assistance on any other basis was worse than wasted; it was creating permanent wards of the international system who could never deliver for their people. By giving large grants to well-governed states, the leaders of those states could address key constraints on development such as infrastructure or a system for titling land to encourage private farming. Those economies would then be able to take advantage of trade and foreign direct investment from the private sector. That would also mean that democratic governments could begin to deliver for their people, reinforcing freedom and liberty. The MCA would become a core piece of the 2002 National Security Strategy.

Gary Edson, the deputy national security adviser for economic affairs, oversaw the design of the program. Gary was one of the best “policy engineers” I’d ever known, one of those rare individuals who can take an idea from inception to implementation. He worked with Stephen Krasner, a professor of international relations whom I’d recruited to the NSC from Stanford. Steve and I had known each other for twenty years, and I knew that he was creative and could bring new ideas to stale bureaucratic thinking. Those two innovators produced a wonderful design, and after some wrangling with OMB we requested funding at a level of $1.3 billion. Together with other increases in aid, the funding authorization more than doubled the Bush administration’s foreign assistance worldwide and quadrupled it for Africa.

The President announced the MCA initiative on March 14, 2002, in a speech at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington shortly before departing for the development summit in Mexico. We wanted the MCA to receive due attention, and Josh Bolten, then deputy chief of staff, had an idea. We’d both met the Irish rocker Bono of U2, who’d been agitating for U.S. help in addressing the AIDS pandemic. Bono was also a major advocate of increased foreign assistance and debt relief for the poorest countries. The President’s pledge to do something about the latter during the second debate with Al Gore had caught his attention, and he’d come to the White House several times to see if we really meant it.

I asked Bono to see me in my office a few days before the President’s speech. He was a little reticent about endorsing the MCA. He agreed with its principles, but I suspect that standing with George W. Bush was not exactly what he or his constituencies had in mind. Bono was also concerned that the MCA would divert attention from AIDS relief. I assured him that we were working on that problem too and that he would not be sorry if he stood with us. He agreed to do so and became one of our staunchest supporters in the work. I told him that it was his job to be the “thorn in our side.” He performed that role admirably. We all came to see that Bono was not just one of those luminaries who use a social issue to seize the spotlight and gain publicity. He really cared about the issues, and he was as well informed as anyone I knew. Bono is a religious man who shared with the President a sense of moral obligation to help those in need. He became and remains a really good friend.

And he was right about the need to address AIDS. At one of my first meetings with then Governor Bush in 1999, we agreed that our agenda in Africa would go nowhere if we did not address the scourge of AIDS. The disease was crippling a whole continent: from 2000 to 2003 alone, approximately nine and a half million people had died from it, and there were estimates of up to 100 million deaths over the next twenty years if something was not done to arrest the plague. One of the President’s first decisions was to support the creation of a Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, which he announced with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the Rose Garden on May 11, 2001. The United States committed $200 million. But the President quickly became frustrated both with the meager contributions of other countries and the slow pace of implementation. The United States would increase its commitment to the fund to $500 million, but the White House had begun working on even bigger initiatives.

In June 2002 the President unveiled a program to stem mother-to-child transmission of the disease. But the President was still not satisfied. He asked a small group, led by Josh Bolten, to develop a plan that could take advantage of new breakthroughs in the use of antiretroviral medicines to treat the disease. Gary Edson represented me on the task force. After several months of work, we all gathered in the Oval Office for the President to make a decision. Josh’s group had recommended a $15 billion program over five years. It would be the largest international health initiative by any one country.

The President began by saying that the United States had been blessed with plenty. He went on to quote the Gospel of Luke, saying, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required.” Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Health, attested to the promising data on antiretroviral intervention. The budget folks did what they were supposed to do: they questioned such a big expenditure in light of other priorities and whether the American people would find it compelling to ship all of that money abroad. There was a brief discussion of whether the African countries could be counted on to spend the money efficiently and without corruption. Josh noted that most of the money would flow through U.S. nonprofits, including many that were faith based.

Finally the President turned to each of us and asked whether he should proceed. There had been one further question hanging in the air: antiretroviral drugs could prolong the life of an AIDS patient, but a cure was still far into the future. Was that enough?

When the President turned to me, I decided to address that question. “Mr. President,” I said, “one of the saddest days of my life was when my mother died. But I have always been grateful that she survived her initial bout with cancer. She died when I was thirty, not fifteen. That meant that she saw me grow up, graduate from college, and become a professor at Stanford. You may not be able to cure those mothers in Africa, but maybe they’ll live long enough to see their kids grow up. That will matter.” Mike Gerson closed the meeting by saying, “If we can do this and we don’t, it will be a source of shame.”

As we left the Oval that day, the President warned us to tell no one of his decision, including the cabinet secretaries. He didn’t want the departments to start fighting over the money. The President would announce the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in his State of the Union the next month.

Both sides of the aisle rose to applaud the announcement that evening, and PEPFAR has enjoyed bipartisan support for almost a decade. Before leaving office the President would seek congressional reauthorization to double the contribution to AIDS relief. The program met the goals that the President set: antiretroviral drugs for 2 million people, care for another 10 million, and testing and counseling for some 57 million. The President would go on to make a major push to eliminate 50 percent of malaria cases and to tackle the problem of other tropical diseases. But it is PEPFAR that will be remembered as one of the greatest acts of compassion by any country in history.

THE TRIP TO AFRICA coincided with what was becoming a devastating humanitarian and political crisis in Liberia. President Charles Taylor’s roots as a brutal dictator traced back to the United States. Imprisoned in Massachusetts in the late 1980s, Taylor escaped from jail and dodged extradition when he faced charges of embezzlement. Instead of returning to Liberia, Taylor went to Libya and received guerrilla warfare training under the guidance of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. With renewed financial support and military arms, Taylor led his armed militia back into Liberia in 1989 and waged a bloody civil war for nearly ten years.

Fearful that violence would otherwise continue, the Liberian people elected Taylor president in 1997. Under Taylor’s regime, ruthless human rights violations and the support of regional militia groups continued unabated. Taylor kidnapped children, converted them into soldiers through the forced use of drugs, and terrorized the civilian population. His rapacious greed for diamonds also led him to support Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front, a militia that oversaw the murder and rape of tens of thousands in that country. Called “the Milošević of Africa,” Charles Taylor became intolerable, and the international community demanded the formation of a transitional government in Liberia in 2003.

By mid-June, despite his promises to step aside, it was clear that Taylor had no intention of leaving. Violence peaked in the capital of Monrovia. I remember vividly a front-page photo in the New York Times on June 28 of a young boy wearing a teddy bear backpack on one arm and gripping an assault rifle in the other. He couldn’t have been more than twelve years old.

Before leaving for Africa, we held an NSC meeting on Liberia. Colin was trying to assist Kofi Annan in bringing an end to the crisis but to no avail. The members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) wanted Charles Taylor out to calm the situation and allow the entry of peacekeeping forces. Yet the African leaders were reluctant to say so publicly, maintaining an often counterproductive code of conduct of refusing to criticize one another no matter how egregious the behavior.

The President wanted to know what his options were in dealing with the Liberian crisis. He’d been involved in several efforts to defuse long-standing conflicts in Africa and during those previous engagements had preferred to work directly with African leaders and through African institutions. That had been done successfully at the UN General Assembly in New York in 2002, when he had teamed with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa to bridge differences between President Laurent-Désiré Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. That had given a push to moderating the Great Lakes Conflict and the raging violence affecting Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo that had claimed millions of lives since 1994.

Now, with Liberia, the President faced the question of how involved the United States should be. Before the meeting, Colin and I met with the President in the Oval. “Why should I do something in Liberia?” he asked.

“Because Liberia is ours, Mr. President,” I replied. We talked about the history of the country that had been founded by freed American slaves.

“Even the Liberian flag imitates the Stars and Stripes,” Colin added. I told the President that my Aunt Theresa had taught at the University of Liberia all the way back in 1961. The ties of the African American community to the country ran deep.

Jendayi had done a paper for me that suggested it would take only a few hundred Americans on the ground (and maybe a warship or two at sea) to intimidate the Liberian insurgents and stop them from fighting. “They respect America,” she said. “It will be enough.”

Sitting in the Situation Room, it was easy to read the body language of the Vice President and Don, who saw no earthly reason for U.S. involvement in the affair. They were particularly concerned when the President asked what military options he had, including perhaps joining the peacekeeping force. The NSC meeting ended with the Pentagon promising to get back to the President with options. In the meantime, the President would use his trip to Africa to rally the leaders in support of a political strategy: Charles Taylor would leave, peacekeeping forces would enter, and a transitional government would prepare for elections.

When the President returned home, he was even more determined to do something about Liberia. On July 14 Kofi Annan visited Washington, and the President took the opportunity to speak about the issue in a joint press conference. “Our government’s position is a strong position. We want to enable ECOWAS to get in and help create the conditions necessary for the ceasefire to hold.” The President reiterated that Taylor had to leave and said that the United States would “participate with troops.” Ad-libbing the last part of the statement, the President had committed the United States to a military role.

Several days later I convened the Principals to see where the Pentagon stood on the President’s request. It had been three weeks since he’d asked for military options. When the Defense Department doesn’t want to do something, the options that the President receives make it seem as if he is about to launch World War III. Colin and I pushed back, saying that it shouldn’t take thousands of U.S. soldiers to secure the airport and seaport so that humanitarian supplies could be distributed and peacekeepers could enter.

The second Principals Committee meeting a day later wasn’t much better. Finally, on July 23, the Pentagon presented a realistic option. On July 25 the President ordered a naval amphibious force composed of 2,300 marines to sail from the Mediterranean into position off the coast of Liberia. Colin told reporters, “We do have some obligations as the most important, powerful nation on the face of the earth not to look away when a problem like this comes before us.” The Pentagon’s pique was obvious, as military “sources” told the New York Times that it had been caught off guard by the announcement.

In the face of international pressure and U.S. resolve, Charles Taylor resigned the presidency of Liberia on August 11 as three U.S. warships drifted into view and two U.S. helicopters hovered overhead. I watched on television as Ghanaian President John Kufuor, the chairman of ECOWAS, escorted Taylor out of the country. There had been a delay of several hours from his expected time of departure. I had called Colin to see what had gone wrong. He wasn’t sure but suspected that the Africans were just taking a little time to “talk the brother into leaving for good.” Sure enough, they soon emerged and the plane lifted off for Nigeria, where Taylor would live in exile until he was arrested and taken to The Hague in 2006 to stand trial for war crimes before the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Two hundred marines went ashore several days after Taylor’s resignation, and within a few weeks, African peacekeepers, under the command of an able Nigerian general, were deployed throughout the country. Liberia would become a true success story with the election two years later of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female head of state on the African continent. Though war-ravaged and poor, Liberia now ranks high on the Millennium Challenge criteria of political freedom and control of corruption. The United States had not looked away, and it paid off handsomely for the people of Liberia and for democracy’s forward march in Africa.