Guest Columnist | A new global war for a new president

With Election Day still over sixteen months away, the 2008 presidential race is already well underway.

We're in store for what will likely be another invigorating campaign season, and once again, a main issue on the mind of the average college student is, you guessed it - the War on Terror.

To date, U.S. war efforts have effectively become a self-consuming unilateral effort costing Americans upwards of $700 billion per year, according to recent estimates.

What's worse is that anti-American sentiments are increasing as a result, ironically leaving us more vulnerable and susceptible to terrorist attacks than ever before.

Accordingly, virtually all of the '08 presidential candidates in the Democratic field have pledged to remove most, if not all, of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan if elected.

Even Republican frontrunners Rudy Giuliani and John McCain have expressed reluctance toward increasing America's military presence in the Middle East.

But what's next? Won't simply abandoning our military operations fuel more foreign contempt toward the U.S.?

Not necessarily.

Just last week, the United States House of Representatives narrowly passed its version of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill, which calls for an overall foreign affairs budget of $34.243 billion.

Shamefully, so-called poverty-focused development assistance receives less than half of that sum - a mere fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars used to finance the War on Terror.

Which is a shame, since college students are increasingly becoming concerned with the issues of global poverty and disease.

Some of this recent spike in interest can be attributed to clever campaigns by organizations like Product Red, which targets young Americans by partnering with corporations such as the GAP, Motorola, and Apple to market clothing, cell phones, iPods and other trendy merchandise whose sales benefit the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The effort to raise awareness for the War on Poverty has also received support from notable celebrities like Bono, lead singer of the band U2, who recently guest-edited July's "Africa Issue" of Vanity Fair.

But waging the War on Poverty is more than just a question of moral fiber - it is also a question of national security.

By investing in the alleviation of global poverty, the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria, promoting free and fair trade and enhancing the infrastructure of the world's poorest countries, we can create stability in areas that would otherwise be highly unstable, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

And fostering this sort of stability indirectly combats terrorism, which thrives in underdeveloped, unstable regions - not just in the Middle East.

Earlier this month, two former foes and ideological counterparts joined forces with the ONE Campaign, perhaps the world's leading anti-poverty organization with nearly 2.5 million supporters nation-wide, to do just that.

Sens. Tom Daschle (D-Neb.) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), each ex-Senate Majority Leaders for their respective parties, have teamed up to co-chair ONE Vote '08, a $30 million non-partisan initiative focused on getting presidential hopefuls to address these issues.

Fighting the War on Poverty "is in the strategic and national interest of the United States of America," Frist said in a recent speech. "People do not go to war with people who save their children's lives."

The fact is that each and every day, roughly 30,000 people, most of whom are children, die of preventable poverty-related causes such as inadequate healthcare, unsafe drinking water, and malnutrition.

By refocusing America's energy toward bettering the lives of billions of people around the globe, the next president can reaffirm fading alliances, forge valuable new ones and reestablish the erstwhile foreign image of the United States.

"Why wage war to tear something down when we can use those same resources to build the world up?" says College junior Katelyn Leader. "The United States must lead by example because only when our government gains respect will others follow us."

And as young swing voters, it is our responsibility to make sure the next president does exactly that.

Kyle Burr is a College junior from West Islip, N.Y. His e-mail address is kbc@sas.upenn.edu.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.