Quepos

Peter Gelling in an article in the New York Times may not mean to be indicting the United States Aid for International Development (US-AID), but there was no way not to read the story of the 93-mile new highway forced through Aceh in exactly that way.  The spin from AID repeatedly was that the local population would like the highway sometime in the by and by as years went by.

“But some villagers along the route, unhappy with payments they have or have not received for their land, continue to resist the project, erecting blockades of barbed wire and boulders to obstruct traffic and further construction.

The Agency for International Development “just said, ‘This is where the road will go,’ without consulting much with us,” said a 38-year-old man named Ilias, sipping coffee by a food stall in Leupung, a town near Banda Aceh.

He added: “Sometimes they planned for the road to go through cemeteries. We were angry.”

The usefulness of the road, though, helped change attitudes. “Now that this section is finished, I think most people are happy,” he said. “I mean, we can go to Banda Aceh now in half the time we could before.””

Oh, OK, it says time for someone with a vehicle, I suppose.

AID thought the “mission” was bricks and mortar.  Standard operating procedure.

“Walter North, mission director for A.I.D., remains optimistic about the future of the region, envisioning an economic rebirth and maybe even a vibrant tourism industry along Aceh’s west coast served by the new road, which is less than half complete. “We are making progress,” he said, “and, in the end, I think people will be proud.”

But he also acknowledged the scale of the obstacles his project had had to face.

“There have been incredible challenges,” Mr. North said. “I think in the beginning we felt that if the international community could respond the way it did and that peace could come out of this immense disaster, then such spirit would make building a road a snap. But life turned out to be a little more complicated.””

Yes, real people, real politics, real tragedy, and the fact that this was about Indonesia and not Iowa.  But, we learned what, exactly with our half-built road after 5 years?  That it’s “complicated?”  Did we not know that before?

Is this the way we work around the world?

New Orleans

Scouring the internet, the only comment I could find attributable to Farmer points to the overly intrusive vetting process.  Nicholas Kristof of the Times in a blog a month ago seem to say the White House was concerned about various public comments Farmer had made in the past.  Secretary of State Hilary Clinton lashed out at the delays in filling this position.  Former President Bill Clinton now a special envoy to Haiti seems to have pulled some strings and had Farmer named a UN Special Envoy for Haiti as well.  All of that seems orchestrated to make a hard pill easier for Farmer to swallow and the public to buy.

My bet is that Farmer is another casualty of the raging neo-McCarthyism in the land and the highly partisan wars over health care that turned into a firestorm with the Tea Party during the summer Congressional recess.  Some call Farmer a “saint.”  Nobody is, but Farmer’s dedication and commitment to health care reform in underdeveloped countries is unquestioned.  I’ve heard him speak.  I’ve read the books.  Farmer is no radical.  We’re not talking about some flame throwing comment where he sided with the senderos in Peru or was on the wrong side – or any side – with Aristede in Haiti or a poker buddy Amin in Uganda.  I’m betting it was simple:  he believes and has often stated, that health care is a right for everyone.

In these days and times that puts him right in the crosshairs of the Becks, Fox, the Republican partisans, and those are skirmishes that the Obama Administration does everything possible to avoid no matter how good or important an appointment in their Rahm Emmanuel cold calculations of the “greater good” involved in the health care reform fight.  The Senate would have had to confirm Farmer.  There was clearly a guarantee from the Republican side that there would be a battle, and despite the certainty that if a Farmer can’t be approved, no one can, I would be every dollar in my jeans today that Farmer is another example of the collateral damage to the way the Administration was caught flatfooted by the ferocity of the summer attacks around health care.