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.

 

OBAMA IS THE AGITATOR-IN-CHIEF

             In an apparent Freudian slip of news reporting, the Fox News website juxtaposed the following two story links, just as shown below, in its page for September 28 2014:

              "Added Tension. Two suspects sought after Ferguson officer shot.

               Related ______________________________________________

                Obama decries 'gulf of mistrust between minorities, police."

            The lead-line about the shooting of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer referred to the shooting of an officer by a suspect reportedly trying to burglarize a community center, who opened fire on the officer when he tried to question the suspect.   On the same night, another case was reported in which an off-duty policeman was shot in his automobile while driving in Ferguson.  The reports on these incidents predictably suppressed the race of the suspects, which (together with the totality of circumstances) provides a near certain indicator that they were black.  As SR and others have repeatedly demonstrated, the mainstream American media systematically suppresses the race of the suspects in crime reports when the suspects are black – even when doing so will frustrate identification and apprehension of the suspect.

             Both police and media practically fell over themselves trying to explain that the shootings were unrelated to the earlier fatal police shooting of a Ferguson felony suspect and the lawless rioting and pillage that were triggered by that episode.  How the police and media were privy to the motives of those who shot the officers remains a mystery.

            Regardless, rather than stimulating any remorse or soul-searching among the Ferguson street packs, the cop-shooting atrocities were followed instead with reports of further threats to kill officers. 

            More recently, other racial agitators interrupted a performance by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra to bellow an off-key anthem about Michael Brown, the pot-loving street hooligan who was fatally shot by a police officer after Brown apparently attacked the officer when the latter confronted him after Brown had been reported for robbing a convenience store.  Some members of the audience and the orchestra reportedly applauded this barbaric  and boorish intrusion, in what (if true) can only be described as a display of invertebrate kowtowing reminiscent of the abject  imperial eunuchs in China's Imperial City.

            So not only do we have racially resentful mobs rioting lawlessly in the streets of Ferguson, but their fellow travelers are escalating matters to opening fire on police officers -- while other Ferguson protesters reinforce the reign of ugly anarchy in that benighted region by brazenly disrupting cultural and athletic events with impunity. 

            Meanwhile, other instances of black mob violence in the streets are too numerous to catalogue, but one admirable web site is at least trying to keep track of these repetitive racial atrocities.  See "Black Mob Violence:  So Many Stories, not enough Room," American Thinker (Oct. 2, 2014), http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/10/black_mob_violence_so_many_stories_not_enough_room.html.

            The "Related" story in the above-quoted Fox headline – and the two stories are much more closely "related" than the headline writer might imagine -- reported yet another incendiary, racially-motivated speech by President Obama.  Before a crowd of fellow blacks at the Congressional Black Caucus dinner  – i.e., those who Obama's Afro-racist Attorney General, Eric Holder, would refer to as "my people" – Obama shamelessly placed all the blame for the "gulf of mistrust" to which he referred on the embattled and harried police.   See http://www.Newsmax.com/US/Racism-speech-Congressional-Black-Caucus-dinner/2014/09/29/id/597415/#ixzz3EiODRfxn.   He then proceeded to effectively exonerate the black street rioters, especially those who are "young", for their violent, offensive, and criminal conduct in the streets of urban America. 

            Obama, together with his radical henchman Holder, has descended to shameless falsification and demagoguery in his racially incendiary political manipulation.

            In his Black Caucus speech, Obama repeated and emphasized the malicious canard that there is endemic anti-black discrimination in the enforcement of the criminal laws in America.  As he intoned in his deliberately inflammatory speech:

                        "Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement, 

            guilty of walking while black or driving while black – judged by stereotypes 

            that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness."

            He further fanned the flames with the following additional nonsense:

                        "There are significant racial disparities. That's just the statistics. 

           One recent poll showed that the majority of Americans think the criminal 

           justice system doesn't treat people of all races equally. Think about that. 

          That's not just blacks, not just Latinos or Asians or Native Americans 

          saying things may not be fair. That's most Americans.

                        "And the worst part of it is it scars the hearts of our children, that 

          it leads some youngsters to unnecessarily fear people who do not look like 

          them and others to constantly feel under suspicion no matter what they do."

            In brief, Obama uses a fraudulent assertion that American police discriminate against minorities to generate the equally false impression that the black marauders who terrorize American cities are a bunch of oppressed innocents with "scarred hearts" who "constantly feel under suspicion no matter what they do."

            No, Mr. Obama.  You have it exactly wrong.  A well-known category of delinquent street thugs are justifiably "under suspicion" because they commit lots of violent crimes -- like gathering in feral packs to attack solitary pedestrians or bystanders, usually white.  The "suspicion" to which Obama alludes is not some irrational and arbitrary paranoia borne out of racial bias, but the exercise of simple logic in observing the realities of the street. 

            What Obama falsely and irresponsibly ascribes to mean-spirited racism and unfounded stereotypes is rooted instead in reality-based self-preservation. 

            Splashing Rocks and others have repeatedly demonstrated the insidious fallacy of the "bloody shirt" of discriminatory law enforcement that is routinely employed by Obama, Holder, and their minions on the left.  It is true that blacks are convicted and sentenced for violent criminal offenses in raw numbers that exceed their percentage of the general population.  But it is also true – and this is the decisive point -- that the percentage of violent crimes committed by blacks is far, far higher than the black percentage of the population.  As but one notable example that has been consistently documented by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (a part of  Holder's Justice Department), blacks commit roughly 50% of U.S. homicides, year-in and year-out, even though blacks constitute but 13% of the U.S. population.  Specifically, data compiled by BJS shows that for the period 1980-2008, 52.5% of homicides were committed by blacks.  See BJS, Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008,  Table 7 (Nov. 20111).  

            In short, it is hard proven fact that a vastly disproportionate share of violent crimes in America are committed by black perpetrators.  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that blacks – mainly young black males – represent such a high percentage of those in prison.  That is not a stereotype.  That is hard reality.

            Moreover, my recent blog on this same topic conclusively demonstrated, on the basis of extensive BJS data, that white murderers are about twice as likely to be sentenced to death and executed than black murderers.  http://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-capital-canard-of-death-penalty.html.  So when Obama asserts that blacks are victimized by discriminatory law enforcement in this respect, he is lying.   In fact, he speaks the very opposite of the truth.   

            And such inflammatory lies by the President of the United States, and by his Attorney General, have serious and dangerous consequences.  In effect, Obama and Holder continue to give a kind of anticipatory dispensation and license to young black males to persist in their lawless behavior.  When the President and the Attorney General proclaim that you are unjustly oppressed and persecuted, and that it is the police who are the bad guys, there is little incentive to "stand down" in the streets.

            It is not surprising, therefore, that police in many cities are increasingly reluctant to apply a firm hand in confronting violent street crime, especially the fast-moving and fast-dispersing urban packs that have recently waged barbaric attacks in Memphis, Rochester, Orlando, Madison, and elsewhere.  It is increasingly apparent that reliance on police and government to provide effective protection in these situations is problematic, since both the police and the government are intimidated by the media and politicians of the left, who are poised to denounce them for racist practices  whenever the crimes they seek to punish or prevent are committed by favored racial minorities.  

           Consequently, and short of attaining highly effective martial arts proficiency, the most effective citizens' defense against such mob criminal attacks is effective and disciplined use of an efficient handgun with the legal backing of a concealed carry permit.  A permit, one might add, that Obama and Holder would deny you if they could.  Don't let them.

            In short, when Obama and Holder stoke their constituencies by condemning the allegedly disproportionate  prosecution of blacks by American law enforcement, they are engaged in spreading dangerous falsehood.  The hackneyed slogans of "walking while black" and "driving while black" are insidious canards with no basis in fact.  On the contrary, the constant reiteration of these fallacies by the President, the Attorney General, and their sycophants in the media have a chilling effect on law enforcement, which causes police to be overly reluctant, rather than overly predisposed, to enforce the criminal laws against blacks and other favored minorities.  The extraordinary passivity of the police in the face of the appalling orgy of criminal behavior by the Ferguson rioters is but one recent case in point.

            Why would the President and the Attorney General resort to such racially incendiary use of their prestige and authority?  Because they believe that an angry and resentful black populace will be more highly motivated to rally behind Obama and the Democratic Party candidates that support him and his twisted agenda.  And because they knew their allies and sycophants in the dominant media will parrot their false claims without question or reservation.

            So the Fox News headline writer got it right, intentionally or not, in printing that the "added tension" in Ferguson is "related" to Obama's racially loaded speech to his fellow Afrocentric politicians and ideologues.  Anti-police and more general anti-white violence in Ferguson, Mo., Memphis, Tennessee, Rochester, NY, and elsewhere are indeed related to racial agitation and condonation of criminality by Obama, Holder, and their leftist minions in government and media.

            This is precisely the kind of hard-edged and genuine issue that should be highlighted by Republican candidates in the crucial battle for control of Congress in the forthcoming elections – and precisely the kind of issue that most of these feckless candidates are too timid and clueless to pursue.  But if there are some candidates who have the guts and perception to pursue an issue that directly impacts the safety and security of their constituents, they are apt to be richly rewarded by the voters.