RUTHFULLY YOURS

Speaking at the Wind Technology Testing Center in Boston Massachusetts on October 9^th, the windsurfer and windbag-in-chief himself, Secretary of State John Kerry, pronounced that climate change, if left unaddressed, will result in the end of times: “Life as you know it on Earth ends,” Kerry said. Last February, Kerry claimed that climate change was the world’s “most fearsome” weapon of mass destruction. Not nuclear arms in the hands of the terrorist sponsoring regime of Iran or in the hands of ISIS or al Qaeda. Climate change is the real number #1 national security threat, according to Kerry.

Perhaps Kerry should take his head out of the clouds and take a hard look at the stark reality on earth that we are facing today. Think Ebola and global jihad for starts.

The World Health Organization called the Ebola outbreak “the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times.” The Ebola epidemic has already killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in the West Africa. But the Ebola virus has spread to other parts of the world, including the United States. A Liberian man who had traveled to the U.S. has already died of Ebola in a Texas hospital. Now we learn that a nurse who treated him at the hospital is infected herself with the virus.

As usual, the Obama administration is scrambling to deal with the crisis by holding lots of meetings and taking half-hearted measures. It has refused to heed calls by an increasing number of people, including a leading epidemiologist, David Dausey, who works on controlling pandemics and said that we must do “whatever it takes to keep infected people from coming here.” This should include an immediate ban on travel from the countries with the largest rates of infection to the United States. A majority of Americans agree, according to an NBC News online survey. Instead, the Obama administration is more worried about such bans being seen as racist and disrupting the economies of the affected countries in West Africa than protecting the American people and easing their fears.

“We don’t want to isolate parts of the world,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, earlier this month. John Kerry said that “we need borders to remain open,” while calling as usual for multilateral action by African nations to deal with the crisis. They are wrong. Except for vital medical supplies transported on military aircraft to help stem the further spread of the disease in West Africa, the borders should be closed. The breeding ground in West Africa for Ebola must be fully isolated lest the deadly disease turn into a global pandemic. To paraphrase John Kerry, an unchecked Ebola contagion will bring an end to many lives including possibly in the United States – a lot sooner than climate change.

ISIS is on the outskirts of Baghdad. It is also on the verge of capturing the key city of Kobani near the Turkish border. While apoplectic and apocalyptic all at the same time about climate change, Kerry sees the jihadist conquests as just part of the “ups” and “downs” there are “in any kind of conflict.” He has talked about so-called “climate refugees.” However, despite the threat of imminent ISIS conquest of Kobani and the flood of real refugees attempting to escape slaughter at the hands of the jihadists in Syria, Kerry said that the U.S. has other strategic objectives. “As horrific as it is to watch in real time what is happening in Kobani, you have to step back and understand the strategic objective,” he remarked. Exactly what that strategic objective is, neither Kerry nor President Obama have been able to clearly explain.

Last month at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Kerry told reporters that the U.S. was getting all that it needed in the way of support from Turkey. But that was not true. Turkey has been dragging its feet ever since Kerry made that remark. Only in just the last several days has Turkey finally agreed to allow the use of its bases by coalition forces fighting against ISIS. Turkey still is preventing Kurds living in Turkey from joining their besieged Kurdish colleagues in Syria to save Kobani. And although Turkey is the NATO member most directly threatened on its border by ISIS, its Islamist government has not been willing to date to contribute any of its own ground troops to fight ISIS and prevent an invasion across its border. If Turkey is invaded by ISIS, will it expect the U.S. and other NATO members to come to its aid with air and ground combat forces under the collective security provisions of the NATO treaty?  What good is Turkey as a member of NATO and purported “ally” of the United States anyway so long as it is led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who shares ISIS’s supremacist Islamist ideology, if not its methods, and has his own caliphate ambitions?

As for what is happening in Iraq – a direct consequence of the Obama administration’s decision to pull all U.S. troops out of the country in 2011 against the advice of military and policy advisers – Kerry said that it is up to the Iraqis to deal with what Kerry himself acknowledged was “an existential threat” to their country. U.S. airstrikes remain too little too late. And military supplies for the Kurds in Iraq to use in serving as the boots in the ground against ISIS in Iraq continue to be supplied through Baghdad rather than directly to the Kurds themselves.

During this past week’s international donor conference in Cairo concerning Gaza reconstruction, Kerry said casually that “There will be ups and there will be downs over the next days as there are in any kind of conflict.” But the conflict with ISIS is not just “any kind of conflict.” And ISIS and its jihadist cohorts are no ordinary combatants with local territorial, political or economic grievances. They are the carriers of the global ideology of Islamic supremacism that threatens, again to paraphrase Kerry, to end life as we know it in a civilized world.

Next to the immediate threats posed by Ebola and global jihad, climate change pales by comparison.