h3. By Johann Christoph Arnold
“If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine? …One option is the use of the military… I think the president ought to have all…assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant.” — President George W. Bush, news conference, October 4, 2005
For years, health officials have warned that a virulent strain of avian influenza could rapidly spread the globe, killing millions. Headlines about such an outbreak now seem to pop up daily, and there is reason for increasing concern. But President Bush’s recent request to Congress, asking for the authority to call in the military as part of the government’s response to such a disaster, is wrong.
To start with, calling in the troops would set a worrying precedent, and not only because it would be yet one more step to a fully militarized state.
We already have public health systems at both the state and federal levels, which, though weakened by years of underfunding, could still be quickly strengthened and expanded by an infusion of congressional aid. These agencies have been operative for years, and the people who direct them are trained and experienced in dealing with infectious disease.
This is more than a medical issue. Have we learned nothing from the recent spate of natural disasters that has wracked our shores? Have we not considered that in the end, disease, pestilence, and floods might be an inescapable part of life?
I am not suggesting that we should stand idly by. I myself have children and grandchildren and friends whom I dearly love, and would be the first to call for professional medical assistance should such a disaster strike my family or community. But aren’t we a little audacious in thinking, in the aftermath of two terrible hurricanes, that we can somehow avert or prevent such a tragedy?
Quarantine and isolation may indeed be a necessary part of our response, but let us not forget that families and pastoral caregivers must also be part of the equation when many people are dying. Does our government really care for human beings, or does it worry more about the devastation such a pandemic could wreak on the global economy?
If widespread death is truly imminent (some sources suggest that 150 million people could die of avian flu) wouldn’t it be better to prepare ourselves by paying at least some attention to the fact that we all must die one day, and that dying is going to be terribly lonely, and frightening, if we are quarantined? We need to concern ourselves with this issue because one day death will claim each one of us.
If we die alone, under the control of the military, who will provide the last services of love for us, and who will comfort the loved ones we leave behind? Are we going to sit back while we are denied the chance to lay down our lives for each other, which Jesus says is the greatest act of love we can ever perform? A military response will not bring out the best in people, but only magnify the fear and anxiety we already have about death.
Why are we so terribly afraid of dying? Only when we are ready to suffer – only when we are ready to die – will we experience true peace of heart. Dying always involves a hard struggle, because we fear the uncertainty of an unknown and unknowable future. We all feel the pain of unmet obligations, and we all want to be relieved of past regrets and feelings of guilt. But it is just here that we can reach out and help one another to die peacefully.
Once we recognize this, the specter of a worldwide flu epidemic will not make us fear death, but give us pause to consider how we can use our lives to show love, while there is still time.
Again, enforced isolation is wrong: sick and dying people are often lonely as it is, even in situations where they have a family and friends. How will they feel when the government forces us to treat them like lepers? How will they find comfort, if they are not even allowed to talk about what is happening to them?
We should see it as a privilege to stand at their bedsides at the hour of death, not a danger – even if this means that we are eventually taken by the same plague. That is why I feel military intervention would be such a tragedy.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ wars and militarism
Lebanon and Syria
March 5, 2005
The resignation of the government is Lebanon is being hailed as a “boost for democracy” Reports describe Beirut as “a sea of excitement”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1428151,00.html. ABC News and others are reporting that “Syria is about to announce its withdrawl from Lebanon”:http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=553479. How wonderful it would be if “Beirut could emerge”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut from its thirty years of chaos with the start of the “1975 civil war”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War.
Even good change can cause turmoil. David Hirst, writing in the guardian, wonders whether the upheaval threatends to “destabilize Syria and turn it into another iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1430243,00.html: “After the example of elections, however flawed, in occupied iraq and Palestine, has come this new, unscheduled outbreak of popular self-assertion in a country [Lebanon] where a sister Arab state, not an alien occupier, is in charge.”
For the latest news, you can turn to the “Guardian’s special report on Syria and iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/0,13031,928812,00.html. To jump in the fray, you can turn to the Nonviolence Board’s thread on the “resignation of the Lebanese government”:http://www.nonviolence.org/comment/viewtopic.php?t=3297
Cheney Team Trying to Muzzle Al Jazeera
January 30, 2005
Apparently the U.S. is pressuring “Qatar to sell the Al Jazeera TV network”:www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30jazeera.html The best line in the New York Times article:
bq. Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other Bush administration officials have complained heatedly to Qatari leaders that Al Jazeera’s broadcasts have been inflammatory, misleading and occasionally false, especially on iraq.
So I suppose Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell have never given out misleading or occasionally false information about iraq?
Al Jazeera is watched by 30 million to 50 million viewers. It’s coverage has been inflammatory and I’m not going to defend that, but it’s the most important media source in the Middle East and should not be shut down by American pressure. Qatar is only considering selling it, but potential buyers for the financially-strapped network are few. And the Cheney team wouldn’t be involved if they weren’t interested in making it’s content more U.S. friendly.
It’s Official: US Abuse at Gitmo
November 30, 2004
While the images of U.S. soliders torturing iraqi prisoners at Al Grahib Prison in Badgdad have been broadcast around the world, US officials have frequently reassured us that conditions at the U.S. detention camp in Guantamano Bay, Cuba, were acceptable and in accord with the Geneva Convention’s rules for treatment of prisoners. As proof the Pentagon and Bush Administration have frequently cited the fact that the International Red Cross regularly inspects prison conditions at Guantamano. They forgot to tell us what they’ve seen.
A confidential report prepared by the International Red Cross this summer found that conditions at Guantamano Bay were “tantamount to torture.” Strong words from a cautious international body. Because of the way the IRC works, its reports are not made available to the public but instead presented to the accused government, in the hope that they will correct their practices. In predicable fashion, the Bush Adminstration privately denied any wrongdoing and kept the IRC findings secret. In a display of incredible audacity it then defended itself _from other accusations of torture_ by citing the IRC’s presence at Guantanamo, conveniently omitting the IRC’s strongly-worded criticisms. Amazing really.
The IRC report is still secret. We only know of it second-hand, from a memo obtained by the _Times_ that quotes from some of its findings (“Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo“http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html, Nov 29). What kind of stuff is going on there? The _Times_ recently interviewed British prisoners who had been detained in Afghanistan and iraq and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Here’s one story:
bq. One one regular procedure was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels.
It’s not needles under fingernails or electrodes to the privates, but it is indeed “tantamount to torture.” While it was hard to believe these prisoners’ stories when they were first published a few months ago, they become much more credible in light of the IRC conclusions.
We still don’t know about what’s happening in the camp. The Bush Administration has the power, not to mention the duty, to immediately release International Red Cross reports. But the United States has chosen to suppress the report. No torturing government has ever admitted to its actions. Saddam Hussein himself denied wrongdoing when _he_ ran the Al Grahib prison and used it for torture. We rely on bodies like the International Red Cross to keep us honest.
There are those who defend torture by appealing to our fears, many of which are indeed grounded in reality. We’re at war, the enemy insurgents are playing dirty, Osama bin Laden broke any sort of international conventions when he sent airliners into the World Trade Center. Very true. But the United States has a mission. I believe in the idealistic notion that we should be a beacon to the world. We should always strive for the moral high ground and invite the world community to join us. We haven’t been doing that lately. Yes it’s easier to follow the lead of someone like Saddam Hussein and just torture anyone we suspect of plotting against us. But do we really want him as our role model?
Vote for War (Or Else)
September 8, 2004
On Tuesday Vice President Dick Cheney told an Iowa audience that there would be more terrorism in the U.S. if he wasn’t re-elected Vice President:
bq. “It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice,” Mr. Cheney told a crowd of 350 people in Des Moines, “because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.”
His words underscore just how much the Bush/Cheney Administration have relied on the 9/11 terrorist attacks for their political legitimacy. Terror breeds terror and fear, anger and violence escalates in its wake. The wars in Afghanistan and iraq are shaping a new generation of America haters, as much because the post-war rebuilding has been so careless and self-serving to American economic interests. War-mongerers in one country support the war-mongerers in another by providing each another with targets and arguments. The cycle goes on.
GWB: “Ah, we did? I don’t think so.”
August 27, 2004
An “unintentionally hilarious interview of President George W. Bush”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/campaign/27bush.html is excerpted in today’s New York Times_. One gem concerned global warming. Just a few days ago his secretaries of energy and commerce delivered a report to Congress saying that carbon dioxide emissions (cars, coal burning plants, etc.) really are causing global warming. Well yes, most of us have figured that out already but this is an Administration that’s runned and staffed by oil industry executives and they’ve insisted for years that the evidence isn’t clear. That they’re now admitting the cause of global warming is big and it should certainly auger a overhaul of U.S. energy policies. But when asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming Bush responded “Ah, we did? I don’t think so.”
He also admitted that he had made a “miscalculation of what the conditions would be” in postwar iraq but said he wasn’t going to go “on the couch” to rethink his decision or his decision-making process. Uhh.., Mister President, maybe you should think about this before offering to serve another four years?
War is Just Another Racket
July 20, 2004
In the LA Times, “Advocates of War Now Profit From iraq’s Reconstruction”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-advocates14jul14,1,614346.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
bq. Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey is a prominent example of the phenomenon, mixing his business interests with what he contends are the country’s strategic interests. He left the CIA in 1995, but he remains a senior government advisor on intelligence and national security issues, including iraq. Meanwhile, he works for two private companies that do business in iraq and is a partner in a company that invests in firms that provide security and anti-terrorism services.
In Under the Same Sun, “Is This Any Way to Run an Occupation”:http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2004/07/index.html#000110, links and commentary about how politically-connected U.S. companies are pilfering iraqi oil money without audits, competitive bidding or oversight.
Beltway lawyers might find all this perfectly legal, but where I come from we call these kind of kickbacks good ol’ boy corruption. And the rest of the world will just see the familiar pattern of modern-day colonialism: a rich American elite getting even richer by extracting third-world resources at gunpoint. iraqis will pay for all the Halliburton yachts with the schools, hospitals and highways they won’t be able to build. “American soldiers are paying for it by dying”:http://news.google.com/news?q=american+soldiers+killed+iraq&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF‑8&c2coff=1&output=search and the “iraqi children may or may not be paying for it with sodimized abuse at Abu Ghraib prison”:http://lincolnplawg.blogspot.com/2004/07/is-this-sy-hershs-october-surprise.html. We will all pay for it for generations because of all the ill-will we’re earning and the ignorance we’re sowing. How many times do we need to prove that war is just another racket?
Exporting Prison Abuse to the World?
May 8, 2004
An article on “abuse of prisoners in the U.S.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/national/08PRIS.html?hp in the _NY Times_ shows that Lane McCotter, the man who oversaw the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in iraq, was forced to resign a U.S. prison post “after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.” It was Attorney General John Ashcroft who hand-picked the officials who went to iraq.
As an American I’m ashamed but not terribly surprised to see what happened in the U.S.-run prisons in iraq. Militaries are institutions designed to command with force and only civilian oversight will ultimately keep any military insitution free from this sort of abuse. The “Red Cross had warned of prisoner mistreatment”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20040508/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_prisoner_abuse but was largely ignored. Abu Ghraib is in the news in part because of a leaked Pentagon report, yet it’s only after CBS News aired the pictures and the New Yorker quoted parts of the reports and turned it into a scandal that President Bush or Defense Secretary Rumsfeld admitted to the problems and gave their half-hearted apologies.
_This is not to say all soldiers are abusive or all prison guards are abusive_. Most soldiers and most guards are good, decent people, serving out of call to duty and (often) because of economic necessities. But when the system is privatized and kept secret, we allow for corruption that put even the good people in positions where they are pressured to do wrong.
It is precisely because the Pentagon instinctively keeps reports like the one on the abuse conditions inside the Abu Ghraib prison secret that conditions are allowed to get this bad. That prison, along with the one at Guantanamo Bay remain largely off-limits to international law. It was probably only a few Americans that gave the orders for the abuse but it was many more who followed and many many more – all of us in one way or another – who have gave the go-ahead with our inattention to issues of justice in prisons.