Bush against alleviating world poverty

In less than a month, world leaders are supposed to come together at the UN for a summit on world poverty and UN reform, and now this administration is calling for drastic changes to the draft agreement or to scrap it altogether:

The United States has only recently introduced more than 750 amendments that would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations, scrap provisions that call for action to halt climate change and urge nuclear powers to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arms. At the same time, the administration is urging members of the United Nations to strengthen language in the 29-page document that would underscore the importance of taking tougher action against terrorism, promoting human rights and democracy, and halting the spread of the world's deadliest weapons.

Now, don't get me wrong, it is important to be tough against terrorism and halt the spread of WMDs, and it certainly is vital to promote human rights and democracy, but what's wrong with helping impoverished nations, act on climate change, and reducing nuclear arsenals?

See, this administration is fast becoming the proverbial broken record. They want to keep terrorism center stage because that's the only thing Bush can work with; without it, he's got nothing to do but ride his bike and chop some wood, and someone must have told him that a President should do something more than that.

Bush wants other countries to get rid of their WMDs (or else,) but he won't even consider giving the good example and reducing (I'm not saying eliminating here, God forbid,) his own WMD stockpiles.

Bush says he wants to spread human rights and democracy, but that only applies to countries that actually have some natural resources we can profit from, not all of them -- what were we thinking!!

Next month's summit, an unusual meeting at the United Nations of heads of state, was called by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to reinvigorate efforts to fight poverty and to take stronger steps in the battles against terrorism and genocide. The leaders of 175 nations are expected to attend and sign the agreement, which has been under negotiation for six months.

The United Nations originally scheduled the Sept. 14 summit as a follow-up to the 2000 Millennium Summit, which produced commitments by U.N. members to meet deadlines over the next 15 years aimed at reducing poverty, preventable diseases and other scourges of the world's poor. But the Bush administration is seeking to focus attention on the need to streamline U.N. bureaucracy, establish a democracy fund, strengthen the U.N. human rights office and support a U.S. initiative to halt the trade in weapons of mass destruction.

Yes, forget poverty, genocide, disease prevention, let's talk about bureaucracy, WMDs, and amassing money for a fund so abstract, it looks like a Picasso. After all who cares, those who die are only poor and mostly black, right?
And now the whole world will get its chance to deal with Mr. Bolton, our newly recess-appointed top man at the UN, who wants:

to impose greater oversight of U.N. spending and to eliminate any reference to the International Criminal Court. The administration also opposes language that urges the five permanent members of the Security Council not to cast vetoes to block action to halt genocide, war crimes or ethnic cleansing.

Because the US obviously can't be held accountable for anything it does (how else would it be able to torture prisoners abroad and break any international treaty we ever signed?) and can't be told it cannot block genocide, war crimes, or ethnic cleansing if it so decides.

The more I think about it, the more I'm certain that W. was a very spoiled child. He clearly always got anything he wanted. Someone should tell him he's grown up now. Or has he?