I don't think this is just hyperbole. Obama's actions here are a disgrace. [rquoter]Weasels vs. AIDS Relief By Michael Gerson Wednesday, January 28, 2009; Page A15 Some of the personnel stumbles of the Obama administration -- including the abortive nomination of Bill Richardson as commerce secretary -- resulted from incompetent vetting. William Lynn's reception as deputy secretary of defense has been complicated by hypocrisy -- the administration's attempt to gain political credit for a restrictive lobbying ban it swiftly violated to get a qualified appointee. But one major personnel error was made from malice. And it calls into question the depth and duration of President Obama's "new politics." During Obama's transition, Dr. Mark Dybul was initially asked to stay on as the coordinator of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) for several months until a replacement could be found and confirmed. Because Dybul was the main architect of the program and one of its guiding visionaries, few were surprised by the offer. With Ambassador Randall Tobias, Dybul organized the most staggeringly successful foreign assistance effort since the Marshall Plan -- eventually helping support lifesaving AIDS therapy for more than 2 million people. While I worked at the White House -- from 2001 to 2006 -- I saw Dybul combine the ability to build bipartisan consensus for PEPFAR on Capitol Hill with exceptional compassion for the victims of a cruel and wasting sickness. It mattered little to the Bush administration that Dybul was openly gay or that he had contributed to Democratic candidates in the past. He was recognized as a great humanitarian physician -- a man of faith and conscience -- almost universally respected among legislators, AIDS activists, foreign leaders and health experts. Almost. A few radical "reproductive rights" groups -- the fringe of a fringe -- accused Dybul of advocating "abstinence only" programs in AIDS prevention. It was always a lie. Dybul consistently supported comprehensive prevention efforts that include abstinence, faithfulness and condom use -- the approach that African governments themselves developed. In fact, Dybul was sometimes attacked from the right for defending a broad definition of AIDS prevention, including programs to address prostitution and transgenerational sex. Over the years, PEPFAR distributed 2.2 billion condoms -- hardly an "abstinence only" approach. By encouraging Dybul to stay until his successor was in place, the Obama administration displayed a generous spirit, as well as a practical concern for continuity in a vital program. Then, the day after the inauguration, Dybul received a call asking him to submit his resignation and to leave by the end of the day. There was no chance to reassure demoralized staffers, or PEPFAR teams abroad, or the confused health ministers of other nations. The only people who seemed pleased were a few blogging extremists, one declaring, "Dybul Out: Thank you, Hillary!!!" As in most political hit-and-run attacks, the perpetrator was not anxious to take credit. It seems unlikely to be Hillary Clinton herself -- Dybul's ultimate boss at the State Department -- who had not even been confirmed when Dybul received his call. But someone at State or the White House determined that sacrificing Dybul would appease a few vocal, liberal interest groups. One high-ranking Obama official admitted that the decision was "political." Yet the AIDS coordinator is not a typical political job, distributed as spoils, like some deputy assistant position at the Commerce Department. It involves directing a massive emergency operation to provide lifesaving drugs, through complex logistics, to some of the most distant places on Earth. And now that operation may be months without effective leadership -- undermining morale, complicating interagency cooperation, delaying new prevention initiatives and postponing budget decisions. It is difficult to imagine what vision of public service could cause any Obama official to celebrate a victory by sabotaging a good man and a good cause. And it is difficult to conceive what political gain Obama has achieved. This type of captivity to extreme interests is precisely what has discredited Democrats so often in the past. It is a kind of politics with all the "newness" of a purge, all the "freshness" of a mugging. Governing, admittedly, is not badminton. But it costs little to be graceful. And pettiness, in this case, may impose a cost on the world's most vulnerable people. "We, who seven years ago," wrote William Butler Yeats, "Talked of honour and of truth,/Shriek with pleasure if we show/The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth." For some in the Obama administration, the baring of the weasel's tooth took merely a day. But none of this should bother Mark Dybul, who sleeps well in the knowledge that he helped save millions of lives -- an experience his critics will never share.[/rquoter]
I know very little about this issue, but a quick search yielded an alternative perspective on the matter: [rquoter] Sexual and reproductive health advocates in Washington are hearing rumors they're not pleased about: that Mark Dybul, US Global AIDS Coordinator, may stay on into the Obama administration - for the first year of President-Elect Obama's term, or indefinitely. While there is not total consensus among HIV advocacy and sexual health groups in opposition to his re-appointment, the majority say it's time for new leadership. Why? Dybul is responsible for implementation of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a program that has made an unprecedented financial investment in fighting HIV/AIDS in 15 focus countries worldwide. Yet PEPFAR is widely-regarded as fundamentally compromised by a host of ideological restrictions that Dybul has supported, interpreting policy as narrowly as possible. "PEPFAR has made progress in providing more people with access to anti-retroviral medication, but the approach has not been far-sighted in terms of prevention," says Kelly Castagnaro of the International Women's Health Coalition. "The failure on the prevention side can't continue if we are going to see progress in stemming the pandemic." Dybul, a medical doctor, has been criticized for focusing exclusively on a medical and behavior-change response to the global AIDS pandemic, rather than building into PEPFAR mechanisms that take into account public health realities and promote human rights. "Dybul has a medical background, and the next appointment should be someone who has experience in gender equality and human rights to ensure a more comprehensive response that addresses the vulnerability of women and girls," Castagnaro continues. "Provisions in current PEPFAR, such as the current prostitution pledge, ignore human rights. It ignores that sex workers can be powerful agents for change when it comes to HIV/AIDS." Jodi Jacobson, who chaired the Prevention Working Group of the Global AIDS Roundtable, has outlined a PEPFAR that promotes human rights on RH Reality Check. Health GAP's Kaytee Riek draws attention to the fact that "not enough progress has been made to address the lack of health care workers. Considering that this is what we need to make PEPFAR sustainable in the long run, hopefully a new doctor would take the need to train new doctors and nurses seriously." Would keeping Dybul on represent a change in course for the President-Elect? While Obama has not specifically disavowed PEPFAR's ideological restrictions, his global AIDS plan, laid out during the campaign, is uncompromising on the need to put science before ideology, and to make certain the US is not funding ineffective programs. The "Barack Obama-Joe Biden: Fighting AIDS Worldwide" plan states, "The U.S. has dramatically increased funding for global HIV and AIDS programs through the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), but the program has faced controversy. Barack Obama believes that our first priority should be to implement the recently signed President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), legislation Barack Obama long-supported, to ensure that best practices - not ideology - drive funding for HIV/AIDS programs." "Obama has made some very bold commitments around global AIDS, and it's going to need to be a priority for him to implement the plans that he laid out during on the campaign," says Riek. [/rquoter] The opinion piece claims that the dismissal was "political" -- the question I have is in what context that word came up when he allegedly spoke with an Obama official. Perhaps the official said, "The current approach is driven by political ideology, rather than best practices." It seems to me that both sides are accusing the other of being "political". Maybe they're both right.
Actually what both sides can probably agree on is that the dismissal of Dybul won't result in "Sentencing AIDS victims to die"
1000000 for your absence. - 999999 for the annoyance from your daily bigoted drivel for the past X years. So a buck.
As much as i disagree with the majority of the trash Basso posts, i have to agree with him on this. Obama can be a president of positive change, but that does not mean he is immune to some errors in judgment. It doesn't seem to make any sense to take Dybul out after all the success that he has had (for Heaven's sake, the man was responsible for one of Dubya's few legacies!). According to that article with the alternative perspective, they need an individual who considers the "gender equality and human rights" issues as well as the medical issues. I'm not saying that they are wrong, I'm saying that they will probably push to the "other extreme" of the issue and get away from the medical perspective that Dybul brought to the table. I don't know the statistics behind that statement, but that is no small feat. You have to recognize and respect that. It didn't seem like Obama did.
