Word: mcnamara
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...when the U.S. was sinking into the quagmire of Vietnam, Robert McNamara resigned as Secretary of Defense and became president of the World Bank. Having retreated from the war against communism, he threw himself into the struggle against another enemy, which has turned out to be more robust and insidious: human misery so extreme and extensive that it can spread across borders in the form of marauding armies or refugees fleeing hunger and chaos...
...McNamara quickly realized, the poorest countries were all but beyond help if their citizens brought babies into the world at a rate that defied the ability of society to make life worth living. In his inaugural speech after coming to the bank, he identified overpopulation as "one of the greatest barriers to economic growth and social well being." That was 23 years ago. There were 3.4 billion people on the planet...
...with the world head count at 5.4 billion, McNamara, 75, has returned to the subject of the population explosion with a vengeance. Bush, by contrast -- even though he is in a position to do much more good than a private citizen like McNamara -- has wimped out in spectacular fashion...
...paper imposingly titled "A Global Population Policy to Advance Human Development in the 21st Century," to be issued this week by the U.N., McNamara estimates that a billion people are living in what he calls "absolute poverty," their lives "so characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy and disease as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human dignity," and that 40,000 children die each day. Yet he argues that the statistics, depressing as they are in many ways, still offer some grounds for hope -- and a major incentive for action...
...McNamara? Liberated? Ultimately, is it pain and difficult experience that shape...