Bono asks Bush for billions
2006-02-03 10:27
Washington - U2's Bono, citing the Koran, the Bible and rock band Dire Straits, urged President George W. Bush on Thursday to boost US aid to the world's poor by about $25bn (about R150bn).
"This is not about charity, it's about justice," the singer and activist told an annual US national prayer breakfast, peering through orange-tinted glasses at Bush, US lawmakers, and Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders.
"That's too bad, because we're good at charity," he said. "But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality."
"There's no way we can look at what's happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that, deep down, we would let it happen anywhere else," said the rock star.
"Mr President, Congress, people of faith, people of America, I want to suggest to you today that you see the flow of effective foreign assistance as tithing, which, to be truly meaningful, will need an additional 1% of the federal budget tithed to the poor," said Bono.
Bush's Office of Management and Budget estimated that the US government spent about $2.473 trillion in 2005, making the singer's request roughly $25bn.
Despite the serious plea at the heart of this speech, the singer began by joking about his attendance at the event, and asked the guests to "please join me in praying that I don't say something we all regret".
"Messianic complex"
"If you're wondering what I'm doing here at a prayer breakfast, well, so am I. I'm certainly not here as a man of the cloth, unless that cloth is leather. I'm certainly not here because I'm a rock star. Which leaves only one possible explanation: I've got a messianic complex," he quipped.
He said that there was "something unnatural, something even unseemly" about a rock star "mounting the pulpit and preaching at presidents", interrupting himself at one point to ask: "Mr President, are you sure about this?"
The Irish singer said he had generally avoided religious people as a result of having a Protestant father and Catholic mother "in a country where the line between the two was, quite literally, often a battle line".
From his parents, he got "the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way, seeing what religious people, in the name of God, did to my native land," he said.
But, he said, he was inspired by religious leaders coming together to fight the spread of Aids, and by the Catholic Church's call for debt relief for the world's poorest countries.
Bono took pains to praise Bush for US generosity around the world, saying that Washington could have "drawn the blinds and double-locked the doors" after the September 11 2001 attacks.
The request came shortly after the US House of Representatives, led by Bush's Republicans, voted to slash nearly $40bn in government help for the elderly, students, and the poor in the United States, in a bid to fight the soaring US deficit.