DAMMIT, MR. PRESIDENT, I'M A SOLDIER, NOT A DOCTOR

              The deadly Ebola virus is having devastating and deadly consequences for a group of West African countries, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.  The virus is an aggressive one, involving enormous potential for epidemic dispersal.  Its effects on those unfortunate enough to contract it are often deadly and gruesome.

                The most widespread and devastating effects of Ebola have thus far been confined to the aforesaid West African countries.  Among the hardest hit is Liberia.  The World Health Organization has recently projected that as many as 10,000 cases of Ebola could occur weekly in Africa by December of this year.  The disease appears to be gathering strength and spreading rapidly.

                Menacingly, Ebola has now surfaced in the United States.  A Liberian national who flew into the U.S. through Dulles Airport, Virginia, and then on to Dallas, Texas, had been infected with Ebola and soon died of the disease.  Subsequently, a nurse who treated the Liberian migrant in Dallas was also diagnosed with Ebola.  A concerned American public nervously awaits the prospect of further cases entering or arising here. 

                And, then, even while SR was writing this piece, another nurse who treated the Liberian patient was diagnosed with Ebola.  And this nurse reportedly flew on a commercial flight after having treated the Liberian – grimly demonstrating that human mistakes are apt to undercut all the dubious assurances that have been given by the Administration and others about the improbability of Ebola dispersal.

                Facing this grave threat to the public health, one would expect a firm and uncompromising response from the Federal Government to shield Americans from exposure to Ebola to the fullest extent possible.  As is so often the case with the Obama administration, however, any such expectation was illusory, and was soon disappointed.

                The one thing Obama could and should do as President, and without further delay, is close the U.S. border to the entry of all travelers, immigrants, and migrants from the Ebola-affected countries --  with appropriate exception for returning Americans who have been thoroughly and conclusively screened before re-entry.  Naturally, of course, this is the one thing Obama has not done, and which his administration insists (as of this writing) it will not do. 

                The one thing Obama absolutely should not do, on the other hand, is send thousands of Americans into the epidemic countries, where they will be unnecessarily exposed to the disease, and placed at a geometrically enhanced risk of contracting it.  And, naturally, this is exactly what Obama is doing.

                Dr. "Bones" McCoy of Star Trek Would not Send a Soldier on a Doctor's Mission

                The Pentagon has recently announced that up to 4,000 U.S. Army soldiers, mainly from the 101^st Airborne Division, will be dispatched to Liberia.  That's more than double the number of U.S. troops reportedly sent to Iraq in connection with the effort to quell the murderous ISIS rampage there.  According to Pentagon and Army spokespersons, the Liberian detachment will provide logistical, engineering, air transport, training, and medical support to the effort to contain Ebola in that country.  The Army insists that the soldiers will not be directly exposed to infected people.  But that is hardly sufficient reassurance.  The soldiers will be engaged in operations in a devastated and disrupted country where thousands of people are known to be infected with Ebola, and there are undoubtedly many other infected Liberians that nobody knows about.

                Incredibly, moreover, Democratic members of the House of Representatives (including the radical Muslim, Rep. Keith Ellison (D. Minn.) are now urging Obama to remove restrictions on these troops having direct contact with Ebola patents.  It is not enough for these leftist agitators, safe in their lush Washington offices, to send Army troops into the Ebola Zone; no, they want to geometrically multiply the soldiers' risk of exposure by forcing them into direct contact with Ebola-contagious Africans.

                American soldiers are trained to go into harm's way, and they have been doing so with enormous courage and frequency in the seemingly endless series of combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Mid-Eastern countries over the past two decades.  But they are trained to do so as armed war fighters, not as some kind of uniformed medical missionaries.

                No matter how elaborately the Administration's spokesmen may spin the facts, it is indisputable that sending American soldiers into the very epicenter of the Ebola Epidemic will enhance their prospects of exposure to, and possibly contracting, this deadly virus.  After all the risks and tribulations they have gone through in fighting terrorist and Islamist armies -- under outrageous constraints and restrictive rules of engagement imposed by a politicized Pentagon and its armchair generals -- the last thing our soldiers need is to be exposed to the risk of a deadly virus for no military purpose.

               

                And, as recently emphasized by those dealing with the Ebola patients in Dallas, "in the Ebola world there is no room for error."  See  http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/in-ebola-world-no-room-for-error-111867.html#ixzz3GAryh9w0.  What if the Defense Department is wrong when it says the Army detachment will not be exposed to infectious Ebola patients in Africa?  What if some of the non-patient Liberians they do deal directly with, unbeknownst to them, do have Ebola?  What if, as a result of such misjudgments, Army personnel do contract Ebola?  Then the disease will be set loose within the U.S. Army. 

                In that event, imagine the understandable fear and anxiety of the wives or husbands of the soldiers dispatched to Ebola Country.  And their children.  All thanks to a "politically correct" decision by Obama and his leftist cohorts to callously dispatch the 101^st Airborne on a non-military mission that is a gross and dangerous abuse of military resources and capabilities.

               

                Wholly apart from the unwarranted and ill-considered exposure of our soldiers to enhanced risk of Ebola, the deployment of thousands of U.S. soldiers on a non-military mission of disease containment and prevention in a foreign country is, as forcefully stated by retired Lieutenant General William Boykin (the former Commander of Delta Force) an "absolute misuse of the U.S. military."  As General Boykin elaborated:  "This is a terrible misuse of the U.S. military, and it comes at a terrible time when not only is the military really stretched thin, such that the U.S. military can not take on another mission, it comes at a time when we are reducing the military’s funding and the military’s numbers.” 

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/boykin-sending-military-to-fight-ebola-misuse-of-soldiers/#oHWTObVbrhcaG2QK.99

                The ultimate mission of the Armed Forces, and especially the Army, is to fight and win wars against foreign enemies in defense of the United States.  At a time when the U.S. is faced with increasing and genuine national security threats in multiple theaters – in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, as well as in the East and South China Seas, see http://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2014/01/cauldron-of-east-asia-crises-in-east.html – the demands on our military resources are particularly intense and expanding.  At the same time, the force strength has been reduced by the Obama administration, to the point where there is already a critical problem of over-extension.

                Why, in such circumstances, would the Administration decide to squander precious military resources on a non-military mission in distant African countries of no strategic or tactical consequence?  No persuasive rationale is apparent.

                But it gets worse.  Even while Obama is misallocating our limited and shrinking military resources on an ill-conceived medical mission more suited to international charities than the Screaming Eagles of the 101^st Airborne Division, his Secretary of Defense has doubled down on the stupidity.  The bumbling and hapless DoD Secretary, Chuck Hagel, has just announced that fighting the tiresome international fraud now known as Climate Change – because calling it Global Warming has since been exposed as a misnomer –presents an "immediate threat to national security" which the Defense Department must address across all of its operations.

                So the next time you hear Obama's DoD bureaucrats and politicized generals bemoan the lack of resources to conduct effective military operations in the battlefields of Iraq, Syria, or other areas where ISIS or Al Qaeda are terrorizing the innocent, just remember:  The resources that could be used for such critical and genuine military missions are being squandered on the bogus Campaign against Global Warming or on charitable medical missions more suitable to the Red Cross or the Sisters of Mercy.

                In the perpetually popular Star Trek saga, the grumpy but lovable ship's physician, Dr. McCoy (aka "Bones"), would always reply to non-medical assignments imposed on him by Captain James T. Kirk by grousing, "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a [physicist, or an engineer, or a navigator]!," -- depending on the particular inappropriate task that Kirk dumped on him.

                Where, one wonders, is the honest and upstanding member of the Army General Staff who has enough conviction and concern for his troops to advise Obama, "Dammit, Mr. President, this is an Army, not an order of medical missionaries!"?

                Regrettably, however, contemporary generals on active duty whose loyalty to their troops and to the integrity of the military's mission exceeds their concern for job security and promotion are seemingly nowhere to be found, in this day and age of the "Rainbow Generals."  See http://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-rainbow-generals.html.

                Like the distinguished retired General Boykin, quoted above, they should be protesting this latest Obama administration abuse of the Armed Forces in the strongest possible terms.  Their duty of loyalty to their troops and to the Army's mission demands no less.  But just as occurred when the general staff shamefully suppressed their previously adamant opposition to the Obama Administration's injection of homosexuality into the barracks, the troops can once again expect only abject capitulation to Obama's political agenda from their feckless general officers.

              Addendum:  The ink was barely dry on this posting when it was reported that, in addition to the deployments mentioned above, President Obama is now preparing to send elements of the National Guard to enhance the U.S. military's Ebola mission in Liberia.  In short, the Administration is preparing to "double down" on its grotesque misuse of U.S. military resources and its unjustified exposure of thousands of U.S. soldiers and now Guardsmen to enhanced risk of contracting Ebola.  See http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/obama-may-send-national-guard-liberia-fight-ebola-sources-n227336.