Bono pleads for refugee help at Capitol

Music megastar Bono tried to stir hearts on Capitol Hill Tuesday by invoking NASA’s ascent to the moon as he sought to garner support for development efforts across the Middle East and Africa. 

The U.S. is uniquely positioned to help millions of refugees around the world and prevent chaos from spilling over border, the rock star said in his testimony.

{mosads}“I have seen the impossible made possible right here in these halls,” the U2 singer and anti-poverty activist told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “When you serve history you serve the people of America, and when you write history we all live it.” 

Yet efforts to dramatically increase U.S. aid appear to face tough odds in Congress, where most conversations about refugees have concentrated on security fears about relocation programs.

American spending for the United Nation’s refugee agency has more than doubled since the time President Obama entered office, making it unlikely that lawmakers will approve more in a tense presidential election year.  

“We’ve been good in the United States when it comes to military efforts,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). “But we’ve been less successful when it comes to governance — what many people call nation-building — the economic and social building implications and ability to improve governance and abilities that are failing.”

“There’s a huge disparity” between military spending and funding for development, she added.

“We’ve got to be able to realign our priorities so that we’re focusing on prevention than we are on reacting to the situation.” 

Voter sentiment in the U.S. has taken an isolationist turn following long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have called for less U.S. involvement overseas.

“People say that America is ready to close in on itself, but America becomes America when it looks outward,” Bono warned Capitol Hill. “When you’re a continent behaving like an island, you’re not America; it’s just not who you are.” 

The U.S. is not alone in pulling back.

In Europe, governments are struggling to deal with an influx of migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Far-right nationalist parties have risen from France to Scandinavia. In just two months, the United Kingdom will vote whether or not to remain in the European Union — a referendum partly spurred by the nationalists such as the U.K. Independent Party.

“Let me soberly suggest to you that the integration of Europe, the very idea of European unity, is at risk here,” Bono told the Senate subcommittee.

“This is unthinkable stuff. And you should be very nervous in America about it.”

Bono was flanked by leading officials at the State Department and United Nations on Tuesday, but was clearly the star of the show in a jam-packed hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. 

Wearing his trademark rose-tinted sunglasses, Bono praised the spirits of refugees he had met in recent weeks while traveling to the Middle East and Africa with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and other lawmakers.

Lawmakers in both parties have expressed skepticism about refugees streaming out of the Middle East and have fought to prevent them from entering the U.S. 

The efforts to block refugees, which have so far been unsuccessful, have been lambasted by the Obama administration and major aid groups.

Yet even without extra hurdles from Congress, the Obama administration is well behind pace to meet the president’s goal of welcoming 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year. The slow refugee admittance has been chalked up to tensions within their security screening — which can take years under the current system — and bureaucratic troubles.

Tuesday’s hearing was part of a full court publicity press by Bono, who also published an op-ed and a three-minute video in the New York Times calling for extra aid for refugees. U.S. aid to other countries should be conditional, he said, to spur other governments to reform their policies to eliminate corruption and demand humanitarian progress.

In the op-ed, Bono echoed a plea from Graham to replicate the Marshall Plan — an ambitious post-World War II initiative to rebuild Western Europe — in parts of the Middle East and North Africa.

“That plan delivered trade and development in service of security — in places where institutions were broken and hope had been lost,” Bono wrote. “Well, hope is not lost in the Middle East and North Africa, not yet, not even where it’s held together by string. 

“But hope is getting impatient. We should be, too.”

Global terror groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and offshoots of al Qaeda have dug in to the political vacuums created by political strife. At the least, the chaos appears to persist to years to come.

But despite the hurdles, lawmakers maintain hope for the future. 

“To think that that will not affect us that’s naive. To think that there’s no solution, that’s just wrong,” Graham said on Tuesday.

“To think it’s easy is crazy.”