Who out there in Newspaperland can explain why President (Don’t Soil My Tender Legacy) Obama can justify sending 3,000 ground troops to West Africa to fight Ebola while simultaneously vowing not to put a single military toe on the ground to counter the ubiquitous nests of world order-threatening terrorists across the Middle East?
Do you imagine Swishy wore frilly dresses when he was a boy? Hmm. Old habits can be unbreakable.
Trying to sound so grown up yesterday, Mr. Obama said that Ebola “is a potential threat to global security.”
So is rain if it continues unabated for 60 days.
So is my least favorite former Mrs. Noonan if you match up a cap gun with her perennial ill temper and embarrassing lack of discipline. If only Flip-Flop Obama would put 3,000 ground troops on her doorstop. At least 2,999 of them would merit purple hearts. The 3,000th would have his own purple heart after she had battered him. Whom do you think trained Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson?
This morning, Los Angeles Register essayist Conor Friedersdorf argued, amusingly, that Ebola is a greater threat to you and me than terrorism. (I will have what he is drinking, bartender.)
The latest is that there are 5,000 “reported” cases of Ebola in West Africa, but only a fraction have been confirmed.
Mr. Friedersdorf scours the American landscape for justification. Darned if he can produce one. Idly, almost boringly, he asks: “I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off switching the counterterrorism budget and the counter-pandemic budget around.”
Presumably seriously, Mr. Friedersdorf asks why we are panicking about terrorism when “the most successful terrorist attack in history killed less than 3,000 people” while the 1918-19 influenza pandemic killed “675,000 Americans and 30 to 50 million people worldwide.”
Aside from the rudimentary silliness of your calculation, Mr. Friedersdorf, if your sources cannot come within 20 million of guessing how many died, why are you riding this horse?
He pooh-poohs terrorism as a live threat.
Pity.
