As the holidays approach, President Obama and his administration see a world where more than one billion people are suffering from hunger. If you go to the State Department's food security web site, you will see a detailed plan for tackling this world crisis.
The Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative document calls for a global hunger coordinator to work with President Obama. Why? The State Department explains, "Coordination will be improved among U.S. government agencies through a whole-of-government strategy led by a U.S. Global Food Security Coordinator."
Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, Friends of the World Food Program, and over 20 other charities support this idea. In fact, the concept is a key part of the Roadmap to End Global Hunger legislation currently in Congress.
But so far, Congress has not moved on this legislation and President Obama has no global hunger advisor. History shows how critical it is for a food crisis to be at the top of an administration's foreign policy agenda.
For instance, what was the Truman administration working on during the holiday season of 1947? Truman's Cabinet Committee on World Food Programs was hard at work figuring out just how much food the U.S. could send overseas to Europe to feed the hungry. Europe was struggling to rebuild after World War II and the Marshall Plan, which would ultimately bring about the recovery, was still being put together.
In this critical period before the Marshall Plan, Austria, Italy, and France were in desperate need of help for the coming winter. In late 1947 an interim aid package was put together to send food and other vital supplies to these three countries. Keep in mind that other war-torn countries were also receiving aid at this time.
The Cabinet Committee on Food submitted its findings to President Truman on December 26, 1947. Tens of millions of bushels of wheat would be available for the interim aid program. We know the rest of the story. The Marshall Plan, with its foundation of food, helped to rebuild Europe from the most devastating war in history.
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Article comments
1 - Christine
And we have the great "community organizer"! Looks like Obama and his administration are slacking on this one. What a shame.