President Obama’s plan to stop the Ebola virus will involve an estimated 3,000 U.S. troops under the command of the U.S. African Command.
Briefly the plan is to control the epidemic at its source, mitigate second-order impacts and fortify the global health security infrastructure. The troops will build additional Ebola treatment units which the U.S. Government will help recruit and organize medical personnel to staff. They will set up sites to train up to 500 health care providers per week. The actual plan is pages long.
The president has been roundly criticized by Republicans because he isn’t sending ground troops to fight ISIS, but is sending 3,000 soldiers to fight Ebola, which one former congressman, Alan West, called “a really bad flu-bug.” He said he would rather send 3,000 tough hardened combat troops to fight ISIS. This criticism was repeated over and over by Republican senators and members of Congress.
Is West nuts? ISIS can not be stopped by 3,000 ground troops. Logistically alone, they are all over Syria and Iraq, and if this fight is to be fought on the ground we’ll need at least 100,000 troops. I’m not a military man, so that number might be low. Ground troops should come from Turkey, Iraq, and the countries in the Middle East threatened by ISIS. Make one thing clear— the minute American ground troops are sent in, ISIS will be able to recruit many angry Islamists to join their ranks. It will be a rallying cry. I think the president knows this and is doing his best to form a coalition that will fight on the ground if that becomes necessary.
Here’s more from West. “The world needs to step up against Islamo-fascism, but I suppose fighting Ebola is easier for a faux Commander-in-Chief than to fight a real enemy of America.” Ebola is a real enemy of America; as a matter of fact, it’s an enemy of the entire world, and has the potential to inflect far more casualties than Islamo-fascists (whoever they are). West continued; “Nice optics there Barack, good try to change the subject, and make yourself seem like a leader fighting a real bad flu-bug.” Not only are West’s comments insulting to our president, they’re just plan ridiculous. Still they’re not as bad as some others.
Todd Kincannon, the former executive director of the South Carolina GOP, claims he is proudly pro-life-with one exception in that he wishes that Wendy Davis, candidate for governor of Texas, had been aborted. Actually he is pro-death not pro-life.
Said Kincannon on Oct 4, 2014, on twitter, “The protocol for a positive Ebola test should be immediate humane execution and sanitization of the whole area. That will save lives. People with Ebola in the U.S. need to be humanely put down immediately. There is just no other way with Ebola. We need to be napalming villages from the air right now.”
It wasn’t clear whether Kincannon favors napalming Dallas, or just the blocks around the apartment where Ebola victim Thomas Duncan lived, said columnist Doctor Zoom on Wonkette. Maybe he just wants to napalm the Hospital where Duncan was treated.
Finally on the subject of Ebola, Kincannon suggested he would kill with zero hesitation the cameraman and health workers who return from West Africa and might have,( MIGHT HAVE !), contacted the disease.
“Sometimes you just have to put old Yellar down,” Kincannon said.
Obviously Kincannon is still out of his mind. Nevertheless, he was a well noted Republican at one time and I wonder how many other Republicans share his views.
Most commentators at Fox slammed the president for not sending ground troops to fight ISIS. Radio host Rush Limbaugh, showing his ignorance once again, broadcast on Sept 16, “I didn’t know you could shoot a virus. It’s the
first time I heard of that.”
There is nothing funny about the Ebola epidemic and the threat it poses to the world.
Charles Krauthammer, a Fox news contributor and also a physician, got it right when he said, “Look, I applaud what the president is doing. This is America at its best. The armed forces are essentially the biggest NGO on the planet for helping people; the way we did in the Tsunami; the way we did in Haiti. It’s organized to go and to establish institutions and structures, and that’s what it’s going to do.” Note: The armed forces aren’t technically an NGO, which means non-government organization.
Krauthammer point is dead on. The president’s campaign against the Ebola virus is right on and the Republican’s criticism is ridiculous.
Glen McAdoo, a Fallon resident, can be contacted at glynn@phonewave.net.