By Obie Usategui ——Bio and Archives--November 2, 2014
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"The number of new cases is increasing exponentially," calling the situation a "dire emergency with ... unprecedented dimensions of human suffering". "Men, women and children are just sitting, waiting to die right now. We can't dawdle on this one. We have to move with force and make sure that we are catching this as best we can, given that it has already broken out in ways that we have not seen before. The CDC already has hundreds of professionals on the ground in what President Obama described as the "largest international response in the history of the CDC."As the Ebola crisis continued to worsen, news broadcasts throughout the nation became increasingly fixated on reporting all new outbreaks here in the United States. Each new case where someone had either become and/or could potentially become infected with the virus made immediate headline news as victims were summarily sent into strict solitary quarantine confinements in different hospitals throughout the nation, sending Americans a sublime message that everything was well under control. Before we knew it, the Ebola coverage had taken an unprecedented priority in just about all newsrooms of the mainstream media in the nation, as well it should. From my own perspective, however, there was seldom, if ever, a time when I turned on my T.V., in which I did not hear some sound bite regarding the deadly disease. It was only then that I realized the true seriousness posed by this virus; it was only then that I realized the magnitude and gargantuan hazards looming over the world's horizons, if, for whatever reasons, this highly contagious disease ever got out of control. It was also at the crossroads of this realization; at this very juncture when I realized the daunting similarities one could draw between the deadly Ebola virus and ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] threat, if yet, how frightening was the disparity in the way the administration has chosen to treat these two evils of humanity. Just think about it for a moment; while at first it would appear difficult, maybe even impossible to draw any such comparison between these two [Ebola and ISIS], the more you think about it, the more sense it will all begin to make. For instance, both Ebola and ISIS were almost unheard of back a couple of years ago. As mentioned earlier, even though the Ebola virus had been known to exist since it first appeared in 1976, the world really did not come to pay any attention to it until as recently as last year, when the current outbreak in west Africa (first cases notified in March 2014), was the largest outbreak since first discovered. Now, take ISIS, a spin off of the Syrian Civil War, which began as an unrest in the early spring of 2011, as Arab Spring protestors rioted against President Bashar al-Assad's government. The conflict gradually transformed into an armed rebellion. By December 2013, nearly 700 people had been killed within the Syrian rebel groups. It was only then, when, for the first time ever, the world became aware of ISIS - a hard-line, puritanical offshoot from al-Qaida, increasingly dominating Bashar al-Assad's opposition, threatening to spread its influence into northern Iraq - the middle-east's bastion of western-style democracy, achieved at the expense of thousands of American lives, only for Obama to give it all back in a matter of days. For the longest time, just prior to the Syrian Civil War, we would all associate terrorism with labels such as al-Qaida, the Taliban, the Jihad, and other Islamic fundamentalists, thus my contention that Ebola and ISIS are, if you will, rather recent historical events. Notwithstanding the timeline similarities, one may also conclude that both Ebola and ISIS, pose a threat to humanity, albeit Ebola has killed close to 5,000 while the Iraqi civilian death toll of those killed by ISIS now passes 5,500. Notably, Ebola kills in the form of a deadly virus, while ISIS, on the other hand, makes a deliberate choice to assassinate its victims with any weapons available, including the brutal beheading of its victims. We could, for all I know, conclude that ISIS is prone to spread as a contagious disease, just like Ebola. I can also unremittingly presume that, if left untamed, both [ISIS and Ebola] could, very well, reach epidemic proportions, like none that we have ever before seen. Armageddon maybe? Who knows...? So, now that you may have begun to notice with me, some of the parallels which, at first, drew my attention, just maybe, the whole entire comparison may begin to make some sense. Not so far-fetched as you may have thought, would you not agree? Given the similarities, would it also not stand to reason, then, that our lamed administration would treat both of these "epidemics" in the same identical way we treat the Ebola virus? Would it not make sense, then, that in that same breath of patriotic sensitivity on which our esteemed White House charlatan decided to take an aggressive stand against Ebola, would do the same with ISIS? Have we not set out to defend and protect our borders from the Ebola virus because of the impending threat it poses to our wellbeing? But...what about ISIS? Does not ISIS pose the same if not a greater threat to us than does Ebola? So...why, I ask, is the United States not taking the same leadership role in preventing the spread of ISIS as we have taken in the Ebola crisis? Why have we not deployed our assets and resources to eliminate ISIS in the same fashion and with the same blitzkrieg responsiveness now committed to eliminating the Ebola threat? Is there a difference? Are Ebola and ISIS so different as to making one and/or the other more deserving of our attention? I personally don't have the answers to these questions, but what I do know is that terrorism today poses a real and present danger to all of us, if yet we cannot consider taking a serious stand of any kind against an enemy which poses a potentially much greater danger than the Ebola virus and all viruses put together. For all I know Ebola has no mind of its own; it is just that - a virus. Dangerous as the latter may be, it still does not have a mind of its own. ISIS, on the other hand, not only has a mind of its own, but a well-organized one at that; a militant mind committed to destroying us; committed to destroying the infidels of the West - a militant mind with much more doggedness and determination than the Ebola virus, or, for that matter, any other virus. Mr. President, don't you think that the time has come for you to take on terrorism in the world with the same resolve you appear to be giving the Ebola virus? How about cloning some of the same radical steps already taken with Ebola? How about tightening our borders and not letting in anyone of potential ties with radical Islamism come into our country? How about stepping up security at all ports of entry, and, other than looking for signs of viral sickness, we begin looking for signs of terrorist symptoms? How about deploying our assets, anywhere in the world where we know there is an ISIS outbreak, just as we are in West Africa because of Ebola? As bizarre as all of this may sound at first, as plausible it becomes when you really think about it. The chances of the world succumbing to a terrorist epidemic are, Mr. President, far more, sir, than those of perishing from the Ebola virus.
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Obie Usategui (The Patriot Obsever) and also runs AFCV-Americans For Conservative Values. Obie is also the author of The Beginning of the End—“The transition to Communism in our own United states has come peacefully, ironically, via democratically-sanctioned elections”