CAMBRIDGE, England -- Just before Christmas, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown came out with the surprise announcement that he was proposing that member countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development address the question of poverty in the world by setting up a new massive aid program. It was to be modeled on the Marshall Plan set up by the United States after World War II. The figure he proposed was $50 billion a year.
Many cynical people saw this as a stage in a domestic political rivalry between Prime Minister Tony Blair and the chancellor. Blair has taken a strong, almost messianic, approach to solving world problems. He took the British to war against the Taliban on his own initiative. So to match Blair's reaching out for a global statesman's role, Brown's aid initiative was seen by some as an attempt to come up with something that would put him on the same global footing, and so justify his claim to be a prime minister in waiting.
But while no one is more cynical about the politics of New Labor than I, in this case the cynics are wrong. It appears that Blair believes that the best way to deal with terrorists is to bomb them off the face of the Earth -- along with innocent civilian bystanders (of whom more have now been killed in Afghanistan than were killed in the World Trade Center).