And that’s just what Pres. Bus wants to do–send in the clowns, aka the military. I’m not inferring that our military are a bunch of silly clowns, but they are surely not the people you need for the task that Bush is referring to.
He wants soldiers to fight the chicken flu. Guys in kevlar vests armed with grenades and sub-machine guns, who’ll kill that damn flu dead.
President Bush, stirring debate on the worrisome possibility of a bird flu pandemic, suggested dispatching American troops to enforce quarantines in any areas with outbreaks of the killer virus.
Bush asserted aggressive action could be needed to prevent a potentially crippling U.S. outbreak of a bird flu strain that is sweeping through Asian poultry and causing experts to fear it could become the next deadly pandemic. Citing concern that state and local authorities might be unable to contain and deal with such an outbreak, Bush asked Congress to give him the authority to call in the military.
The flu has so far killed a total of 60 people in a 2 year period, and does not spread from person to person at this point. But George is already seeking his fortune, with dreams of power garnered from a potential epidemic. Just like he used the bombing of the World Trade Center as an excuse to invade a country that had nothing to do with it (although I suppose that since the terrorists were middle eastern Muslims, and Iraq is a middle eastern Muslim nation, there must be a connection).
Bush wants the military to be in charge of conducting search-and-rescue operations in the event of disasters such as Katrina, and sending in supplies after massive natural disasters and terrorist attacks – “a notion that could require a change in law and that even some in the Pentagon have reacted to skeptically. The idea raised the startling-to-some image of soldiers cordoning off communities hit by disease.”
“The president ought to have all … assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant,” Bush said.
Does that mean absolute power, Mr. Bush? Are you going to next declare yourself der Fuhrer, and cancel all elections and disband Congress?
Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, called the president’s suggestion an “extraordinarily draconian measure” that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu, and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.
“The translation of this is marshal law in the United States,” Redlener said.
Marshal law in the US is what the Bush is reaching for. Complete control of the people, and curtailing of civil liberties, which seems to have been his dream from the moment he seated his butt (illegally) in the Oval Office in 2000.
I will take Redlener’s comments a step further. The reason that the response to Katrina was such a mess was that the budget to FEMA had been destroyed, and instead of capable people WITH EXPERIENCE running the show, incompetent political appointees like Michael Head-Up-His-Ass Brown were in charge. If FEMA hadn’t been all but destroyed by making it an appendage of homeland security, and if the real leadership hadn’t been removed, the response to Katrina would have been quite different. And if all of our National Guard weren’t sitting somewhere in Iraq, baking under the hot sun and wondering why the hell they are there (doesn’t the term “National Guard” mean that they’re supposed to be guarding our nation and not Iraq?), we would have had more than enough support to keep things under control.
So no, the military should be an absolute last resort and not a first one.
And in the case of an epidemic, pray tell, when have we ever needed the military to step in? We need health professionals, people skilled in dealing with contagious infectious diseases, not soldiers pointing their guns at a terrified population. The U.S. has dealt with many epidemics. Name the disease, and it’s been here; smallpox, malaria, yellow fever, polio, influenza, HIV. And never have we needed the military.
Perhaps the best example were the annual summer epidemics of polio, which swept the nation and instilled a fear like no other. Worse than the thought of dying from polio, was the thought of surviving and being encased in an iron lung for the rest of your life. But yet, every summer, communities took measures to try to control outbreaks, even though they had no idea how the virus spread. No one panicked, and there was no need for the military. Back in those good old days, we had a real public health service.
Instead of the military, what needs to be done in preparation for an epidemic is to restore funding to public health services on the local, state and federal levels, so that they can do their job. Bush’s cutbacks have almost destroyed our public health services, and ours is about the worst in any developed nation. Cuba can run circles around us. Isn’t that sad?
If we begin now to regain our public health services, we might just be ready if the bird flu ever does turn into an epidemic among humans. But then, that would destroy Bush’s dreams of Fuhrerhood, wouldn’t it. He seems to be little concerned about the fate of the population, and more so about garnering additional power for himself.
Action News 6
