The legislation which Clinton is pushing during his trip and is currently going through the legislative
process in Congress is said to replace economic aid with commerce between the US and Africa
would trade special trade status for African nations for reducing their barriers to trade, but it has
been criticized for opening African resources to renewed exploitation by western financial interests,
what some have branded a new colonialism. Clinton, in Uganda on March 24th, called for millions in
aid from the US to fight malaria, to train teachers, and to provide computers to connect schools
there to the internet. While it sounds noble, it is rather meaningless without the necessary
infrastructure, which simply does not exist. Most African homes do not even have telephones, and
internet access is therefore a moot point. Schools might be well served in having such access, but
there are broader considerations. The infrastructure does not even exist to make such access
plausible for them. And what infrastructure does exist is starkly inadequate and flawed. 

Those working with the Barden investment have encountered a maze of related problems. They have
faced widespread bureaucratic and business corruption in Africa, and have had difficulties with
simply accomplishing the necessary tasks to operate due to infrastructure inadequacies and social
behavioral barriers. The point is that Clinton's grand designs are frosting for a cake that does not yet
exist. And the fears expressed of opening Africa to neo-colonial looting are complicated by the
allegations that American firms which are supposed to be opening the path into Africa have to serve
corruption in the Clinton Administration, as well. While nothing of the Barden initiative has indicated
this, other businesses find themselves privy to investment and commerce opportunities only on the
contingency that they contribute to Clinton and Democrat sanctioned campaign efforts. America
media, instead of reporting the realities of what is going on with the Clinton excursion, are parroting
the themes the President announces, and these come down to announcing that if Africans face such
problems then, 'Let them eat cake!'

Rawlings and Museveni have received Clinton with open arms, and outwardly at least, seem not to
be aware that they are actually caught in his crosshairs. Clinton's African Renaissance is hyperpole
for jacobin neo-colonialist looting. And when he moves on from Uganda, his next sites are set on
Rwanda, Laurent Kabila of the Congo, and on South Africa. But they have to be cognizant of the
reality behind Clinton-speak. When he talks about privatization, he still wants to grow government,
at least under the flag of the United Nations' new world order, and when he talks about
industrialization, it is only the version of it that can be accomplished without the destruction of the
environment he attributes to it. When he throws up mention of population control, he is calling for
mandatory abortion and population reduction. Markets are 'free' only to those who are willing to pay
the price to the right people to use them. What Clinton is doing is waging war against the African
'renaissance' of market orientation and economic growth and development. Having worked to
stymie such trends in central and eastern Europe and especially the Czech Republic, Mexico, Japan,
and South Asia, he is simply opening a new front. 

Clinton continued his embarrasing diatribe on Wednesday meeting in Entebbe with leaders from
several central African nations. The rhetoric is not new, but the fact that he is delivering it from Africa
is supposed to make it different. But what he is posing is nothing new, despite the hype. Typically,
however, Clinton rattled on about American 'sins' toward the area, expanding that beyond
apologetics for slavery to regrets about American neglect for the area through its travails of famine
and civil war. Curiously, the 'neglect' he referred to most involves our lack of response during the
genocide that took place in Rwanda several years ago. 

But it was Mr. Clinton who was in the White House during the period, and who did nothing about it.
It is doubtful that we could have done much anyway, short of a massive commitment of American
troops, which would have been faced with a daunting task of managing what would have been
impossible to counter, even with massive investments of US resources and lives. Further, in spite of
references to the bloody civil war still going on in neighboring Sudan, he proposed nothing that
would do anything to contain it, further underlying the hypocrisy of his rhetoric. That we should not
even be talking about it is underscored by the ineptitude of the Clinton team actions five years ago in
Somalia, which can hardly be missed by the leaders he was entertaining. 

On top of that, he is doing all this at Entebbe, the scene of the courageous Israeli reaction to
Ugandan terrorism some years ago, where the brother of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's brother lost his life (the same Netanyahu who has been the recepient of Clinton scorn).
Unnervingly, he has proposed a joint central African/American security arrangement to supposedly
prevent this from ever happening again in the region! The ink he put on the papers along with the
African leaders he met with is about as meaningful as that he signed to the letter he wrote years ago
to the ROTC officer when he faced being drafted for the Vietnam conflict. But this is typically
Clinton. What matters is what is said, not what is done; feelings and emotions and not actions. 
It not so much that he lies and distorts, but that he does so as callously as he is want to do. 




Continue