"You Can't Do It With Force": Will the 44th President Listen to Jeffrey Sachs?

Earlier this week, I attended Charlie Rose's conversation with world-renowned economist and author Jeffrey D. Sachs at the 92nd Street Y, and I came away from the event torn with alternating currents of outrage and hope -- precisely the reaction I think Dr. Sachs intended.

After riffing about the current domestic downturn in the economy -- for which he partly blamed Alan Greenspan's imprudence and lack of foresight -- Sachs got rolling on the need for governments to fulfill their promises to fight extreme poverty.

For someone unfamiliar with Dr. Sachs' work, the above description may make him sound like a humanitarian activist. While he does make a moral appeal -- human beings after all are dying needlessly and en masse in the third world -- his argument for aid and infrastructure is rooted in shared economic and geopolitical interests. In other words, building roads, bringing medical clinics and vaccines, supplying bed nets to protect against malaria, and providing nutrients to nourish the soil of intensely suffering regions in Africa, Asia, and Arabia will strengthen our economy and keep us safer from terrorism.

We have the resources and have made the promises to help these helplessly languishing regions get on that first rung of the ladder of development to pull themselves up and thrive. (Dr. Sachs referred to aid to India in the 1960s as a case-in-point of this kind of aid working wonders.)

As the richest country in the world, we need to follow though. We possess the tools to save so many lives and improve our own standing in the process.

Perhaps the most affecting moment of the evening came when Sachs said, "John McCain has said the Islamic extremism is the transcendent threat of our generation. [pause] If McCain becomes president he will make Islamic extremism the transcendent threat."

The logic here is that, while there are many miscreants out there that need to be rooted out, many would-be peaceful people resort to violent extremism when they are impoverished and hopeless. By engaging Muslim nations in perpetual war rather than helping them with infrastructure, we are fanning the flames of extremism, not defeating it.

This brought to mind the idea that helping poor Muslim countries -- like Greg Mortenson's work to build schools in Pakistan, documented in the bestseller Three Cups of Tea -- is our strongest tool to "fight" terrorism.

"You can't do it with force," Sachs said, with his own measure of vocal force. Then he repeated it to the silent, riveted auditorium.

I picked up a copy of Dr. Sachs' new book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. His previous book, The End of Poverty: Economic Solutions for Our Time, is one of the most powerful reads I've encountered, and does not require prior expertise on economics.

Sachs has many allies and supporters, including Al Gore, Kofi Annan, and Bono. McCain's dogma is well-documented, but will the Democrat nominee embrace Sachs' humane and sensible proposals?

It's up to the voters and the media to insist.

Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of the memoir, "The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle."

Comments

[texanna]

Dr, Sachs is hardly the humanitarian that your article implies -- just ask the people of Bolivia, Poland or Russia. As a proponent of the Chicago Boys' "Shock Doctrine" he has been the saboteur and not the saviour of many developing countries as has been ably documented by Naomi Klein in her book, "Shock Doctrine". Yes, he has done some humanitarian thing such as advocating for providing bed nets, but these minor efforts pale in contrast to the large-scale problems he's created. The USA will continue to reap the negative rewards for our actions until we divorce ourselves from the control of the economic theories and policies that Milton Friedman passed on to us through his Chicago Boys and their subsequent work through the IMF and the World Bank. As all of the candidates that the corporatist media have left for us to haggle over owe a great deal to these Big Money interests, I don't hold out much hope that anything of substance along this line will occur with the election of our 44th President. At some point, we as citizens are going to have to recognize that our agenda and our safety is never going to be achieved until we remove money from the equation and have publicly financed elections.

[WIpatriot]

Here, here!

[elpollo]

"Perhaps the most affecting moment of the evening came when Sachs said, "John McCain has said the Islamic extremism is the transcendent threat of our generation. [pause] If McCain becomes president he will make Islamic extremism the transcendent threat."

If Sachs had any balls he would have said that if McCain becomes president, then McCain will become the transcendent threat to our generation. But, then again, if pigs could fly..........

[elpollo]

Read Naomi Klein's log ( The Shock Doctrine ) of how Sachs helped to institute the oligarchs takeover under Yeltsin, and try rewriting your piece again. Sachs is a wolf in sheep's clothes.

[speakingtruth2power]

To carry off Sachs' better way we will need a leadership that inspires others to do

more and profit less. Volunteerism for the good of society is what JFK spoke of in

asking us what we can do for our country, instead of what our country can do for us.

Barack Obama offers US a chance to rekindle that spirit as we begin deBushification.



We need to start by making sure our own children receive good care, nutrition and a

better education through High School. Those who cannot win scholarships or afford

college should enter three years of public service in either the new military, AKA the

Peace Corps, earning up to six years of advanced education tuition and assistance.


Other advanced countries should do the same, sending out their educated into the

third world, teaching and training the less fortunate to enter the world of modernity.

This group of young people would be trained as peace keepers, able to defend both

themselves and the villagers they work with assisted by military & intelligence pros.

ST2P.

[peaceandfreedom]

As Michelle Haimoff reported yesterday:

"...he described the mess as "intentional" and pointed fingers at Alan Greenspan,..."

INTENTIONAL!

You actually had someone with 3 degrees from Harvard, come right out and say what most thinking folks on this site already believe, but can't prove, and this is not Headline News? And, more importantly, he is still walking around with all his limbs intact?

Yes, I disagree with some of his suggested methods for dealing with world poverty--he doesn't address many of the underlying causes that need to be eradicated. But, though it isn't quoted here today, that remark about how this economic downturn is, to his economist mind, an intentional event, enriching the few at the expense of the many--yet again, is one of the bravest things, or stupidest, you will read this year!

It should be HuffPo front page stuff!

[speakingtruth2power]

The neocons would rather follow Milton Friedman's economic plan

that allows them to make significant advances during catastrophes.

Much like Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, times of crises are their

opportunities to reshape economies and governments to their own

fascist image through privatization, profiteering and promulgation.

ST2P

[silverball]

i caught dr. sachs on morning joe the other day and thought his approach seemed so much better than the more guns and bullets approach or our current incompetent "leaders"....looking forward to reading his books....

[LureDlou]

Jeffrey Sachs is a good guy but just as he advocates that you can't solve problems through violence, neither can you do it just with money. Sachs has a nasty habit of glossing over the problems of governance and corruption in many developing countries that prevent aid from reaching its intended recipients. It's almost as if Sachs would like so much money to be put into the aid system that the bad guys' greed will finally get satisfied....unfortunately there is no evidence for this. The fact that Al Gore, Kofi Annan and Bono are his big supporters should give one pause as well -- easy solutions make for good sound-bites among the poverty stars, but the situation on planet earth requires a bit more diligence and realism.

[Tubby]

Spot on, LureDlou.