Commenting on Jan Egeland's address to the World Vision Triennial Council meeting in Singapore (Egeland is former U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator), Jim Wallis lifts up the 10 challenges for World Vision that Egeland identifies. Wallis believes these are worthy of consideration by any organization or group seeking to relieve human pain and suffering. While each of them is interesting and thought-provoking, number four seems to me to be worthy of special mention, and Wallis uses it as the title of his entry:

We are there to change things, not just to keep people alive. Humanitarian aid cannot become an alibi for moral and political change.

Writing in The New Yorker of August 27, 2007, in an article on Nicolas Sarkozy, Adam Gopnik quotes Jean-David Levitte, the former French Ambassador to the United States, as follows:

When Sarkozy met Condoleezza Rice, she said, “What can I do for you?’ And he said, bluntly, ‘Improve your image in the world. It’s difficult when the country that is the most powerful, the most successful—that is, of necessity, the leader of our side—is one of the most unpopular countries in the world. It presents overwhelming problems for you and overwhelming problems for your allies. So do everything you can to improve the way you’re perceived—that’s what you can do for me.”

Even making allowances for the longstanding differences in foreign policy objectives between France and the U.S., it's frightening and sad to realize how quickly and utterly the Bush administration, recklessly pursuing a neoconservative agenda, has squandered the international goodwill the U.S. has built up over many decades. Even if foreign policy has to be constructed from the competing self-interests of state actors (and while this assumption needs to be challenged, this is not the place), it is tragic to realize how rigorously the present administration has so obviously and consistently sought to advance the narrow policy interests of the U.S. at the expense of humanitarian goals, and how damaging that agenda and the way it has been pursued have been to international perception of the United States. Bravo to Sarkozy for speaking so directly! Let us hope Rice was listening, and let us hope she has levers to pull within the administration that could lead to a change.