Chickenhawks of the kulturkampf.
Remember the Cairo Pledges?
Back in 1994, in Cairo, the International Conference on Population and Development outlined a not-uncontroversial agenda to limit population growth by providing family planning services throughout the world. In 1999 (Y6B, apparently; I vaguely remember the news we’d passed 6 billion people, but never saw “Y6B” until just now. —Like “Y2K,” get it? How quaint), there was some evaluation and re-evaluation and negotiations (but no renegotiations) and meetings with names like the Hague Forum were held, and the impact of the ICPD’s Programme of Action were assessed, and how well countries had held up their various ends of the various bargains (the US had only ponied up about half the money it had promised, typically)—and you should maybe insert your own joke about lies, damn lies, and statistics that take several months of argument to phrase properly. Still. The report that was finally issued “outlined some of the progress that has been made in the five years since the 1994 conference and proposed further steps that should be taken around the world to promote development, gender equality, women’s empowerment and reproductive health.” Maybe there wasn’t enough money, but there never is; good work was still being done. “All but a few nations had accepted the essentials of the Cairo agenda; expanding access to reproductive health services is no longer a controversial issue; and the challenges of implementing the ambitious goals of the Programme of Action are now in the forefront.”
But that was 1999, and this is 2002, and George W. Bush is in the White House. So. What happens at the Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference, when more than 40 countries meet to discuss the current state of the Cairo Pledges and reaffirm their commitments? Let’s ask Eugene Dewey, the US assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration:
“We have made some efforts to improve the language of the text. This has been interpreted as pulling away from the ICPD,” he added. “We are not trying to overturn anything.”
As it stands, the 22-page plan of action has large chunks of bracketed paragraphs, indicating the language in the document that Washington’s negotiators are disputing.
Among the sections with language that the U.S. is objecting to are those on “Gender Equality, Equity and Empowerment of Women,” “Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health,” “Adolescent Reproductive Health” and “HIV/AIDS.”
The Cairo Pledges as affirmed in 1999 state that “where there is a gap between contraceptive use and the proportion of individuals expressing a desire to space or limit their families, countries should attempt to close this gap by at least 50% by 2005, 75% by 2010 and 100% by 2050.” —We are against that, now.
The Cairo Pledges as affirmed in 1999 state that adolescents have a right to information that will “enable them to make responsible and informed choices and decisions regarding their sexual and reproductive health needs….” —We are against that, now. And the bit that insisted “that at least 90%, and by 2010 at least 95%, of young men and women aged 15-24 have access to the information, education and services necessary to develop the life skills required to reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection.” We can’t have that, can we?
The Cairo Pledges as affirmed in 1999 assert a need to provide treatment to women who have suffered from illegal abortions, and “in circumstances where abortion is not against the law, health systems should train and equip health-service providers and should take other measures to ensure that such abortion is safe and accessible.” Emphasis added, but even so: this sort of language could be used to support abortion rights, and so it is too much, and so it must go.
There were controversies in 1994, and in 1999, too. As “The Bumpy Road from Cairo to Now” puts it, “the Holy See and a small number of allied delegations sought to have the document reflect their conservative views.” Those “allied delegations” included variously Argentina, Libya, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Syria. Never the US, no; we, in fact, brokered a number of compromises on language that left intact the original Cairo Pledges (which, remember, were not to be renegotiated) while preserving some rhetorical wiggle room around such controversial topics as adolescent sexuality, women’s empowerment, and abortion.
But that was 1999, and this is 2002, and George W. Bush is in the White House. And we stand alone.
The US delegation called for a vote on the plan [17 December], an almost unprecedented move at a United Nations (UN) conference, which normally make decision by consensus. The US was the only dissenter in votes to remove the phrases and insert a stronger focus on abstinence in the section of the plan dealing with adolescent sexual activity, according to Agence France Presse.
Iran was one of the participants at this Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference. Iran thought we were going too far. Iran voted us down.
The US delegation, led by Assistant Secretary of State Gene Dewey, argued that reaffirming the Cairo plan would “violate [US] principles” and “constitute endorsement of abortion” in a speech at the conference on Monday, according to the Jakarta Post. Dewey further stated that “the United States supports the sanctity of life from conception to natural death,” according to the New York Times.
The Philippines, the largest Catholic country in attendance, did not agree with us. The Philippines voted us down.
We did end up joining the consensus in reaffirming the Cairo Pledges, submitting a non-binding document outlining our various objections to teaching adolescents what they need to have healthy sex lives and to empowering women to choose where and when and if they will have a family and to ensuring that contraceptives and abortions are available on demand and without apology. —But the Bush Administration was threatening to back out of the Cairo Pledges entirely back in November, to take our ball and hold our breath until we turn blue if we didn’t get our way. Consensus, schmonsensus; given our contemptuous (and contemptible) track record of late as regards multilateralism and keeping our word, I think it’s safe to say that the pledged Programme of Action won’t be getting the $6.1 billion total budget the world thought it would need by 2005.
In 1999, while world governments and NGOs were hammering their way through the Hague Forum to reaffirm the work of the Cairo Pledges, then-candidate George Bush gave a speech to the Council For National Policy. No press was in attendance, but the speech was caught on a tape that few have heard:
The media and center-left activist groups urged the group and Bush’s presidential campaign to release the tape of his remarks. The CNP, citing its bylaws that restrict access to speeches, declined. So did the Bush campaign, citing the CNP.
Shortly thereafter, magisterial conservatives pronounced the allegedly moderate younger Bush fit for the mantle of Republican leadership.
The two events might not be connected. But since none of the participants would say what Bush said, the CNP’s kingmaking role mushroomed in the mind’s eye, at least to the Democratic National Committee, which urged release of the tapes.
“Partly because so little was known about CNP, the hubbub died down,” says that ABC piece. Well, crank up the hubbub. The Mighty Casio has dug up some ugly dirt: a decent plot of links, CNP tax returns, and evidence of links with Christian Reconstructionists and with electronic voting machine manufacturers. —Plus, their friends and fellow travelers.
These, ladies and gentlemen, are the chickenhawks of the kulturkampf. They meet in secret and conduct high-level debates that they never talk about and they refuse to discuss their intents and purposes. They hold firm to their beliefs, like the segregationists and the neo-Confederates, but—like the segregationists and the neo-Confederates, and their reprehensible ideas regarding race—they realize their “nativism, xenophobia, theories of racial superiority, sexism, homophobia, authoritarianism, militarism, reaction and in some cases outright neo-fascism” won’t find much acceptance in the general culture. (Of course, the general culture has been seduced by a liberal media run by New York and Hollywood.) They know their idea of what God and Judeo-Christian morality ordains for us does not square with scientific research and reason and public opinion. (Of course, scientists are all secular humanists who lie and dissemble to deny God’s word.) They know that if they fight openly for what they believe, they will lose.
And so, like access capitalists and safety-net entrepreneurs, they do deals in back alleys and smoke-filled rooms. Like the chickenhawks in the war against Iraq, they lie and distort and propagandize and ignore or dismiss the dire warnings of experts in the field. And—as with the segregationists and the neo-Confederates—the Republicans pander to them, speak at their functions and funnel money their way, and in return for votes in primaries and get-out-the-vote efforts in general elections, the kulturkampf chickenhawks get their agenda imposed by fiat, circumventing public debate and the democratic process. Vital health information is removed from the public sphere. Scientists are replaced by theocrats who allow agendas to dictate facts. Churches are allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion in their use of federal money. Money is withheld and promises are broken for the most spurious of reasons. And we turn our backs on the rest of the world and walk away from hard-fought incremental but nonetheless valuable gains in the fight for health and individual autonomy and education and population control.
Promises were made in 1999. Our delegates sent to reaffirm the Cairo Pledges and move forward on its Programme of Action promised to fulfill our commitments to family planning and reproductive health services, and, as Hilary Clinton stated in her keynote address to the Hague Forum, to recognize that we “are called upon to make investments in the human and economic development of people, particularly girls and women.”
But it’s 2002, and George W. Bush is in the White House. We do not know what promises he made in 1999 to the CNP, or implied, to secure the imprimatur of conservative solons; the speech is secret. There is no text to quote, no public record of his words.
His actions, though, speak loudly enough. And so will the consequences. —We know what promises he’s keeping.
