Military Intervention — For the Flu?

October 8, 2005

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.

Johann Christoph Arnold (“www.ChristophArnold.com”:www.ChristophArnold.com) is an author and a pastor with the Bruderhof Communities (“www.bruderhof.com”:www.bruderhof.com).

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.