Bush Seizes
On Flu Threat To Press For Martial Law Power
By Bill Van Auken
07 October 2005
World
Socialist Web
President
Bush Tuesday seized on the threat of a global bird flu pandemic to press
yet again for the legislative changes to grant him power to deploy US
combat troops in police operations on American soil.
Bush suggested that
large numbers of troops could be needed to effect a quarantine,
essentially sealing off whole cities or regions of the country in the
event of an outbreak.
The policy
questions for a president in dealing with an avian flu outbreak are
difficult, Bush said in a rambling answer to a question posed
at a White House press conference Tuesday. One example: 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?...
And who best to be able to effect a quarantine?
Answering his own
question, Bush declared, One option is the use of a military thats
able to plan and move. So thats why I put it on the table. I think
its an important debate for Congress to have.
The presidents
talk of deploying troops to enforce quarantines has no precedent as
a public health measure in the US. Historically, quarantines have been
applied against individuals and families diagnosed with an infectious
disease, or used in extreme circumstances to prevent the congregation
of large groups of people in areas where a disease is spreading.
But sealing off
whole regions of the country by military force and preventing anyone
from entering or leaving them has more in common with civil war measures
than preventive health care.
It is not clear
why the military would be needed for such an operation, unless it would
be to set up roadblocks and shoot down anyone attempting to escape a
region placed under quarantine.
Public health professionals
blasted the proposal, warning that the presidents remarks were
indicative of the administrations failure to prepare for the looming
flu threat.
Referring to the
danger of a flu pandemic, Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center
for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, warned that the US
government is phenomenally not prepared for this.
Describing Bushs
proposal as extraordinarily draconian, Dr. Redlener added,
The translation of this is martial law in the United States.
Bushs call
for using troops to fight the flu follows his insistence in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina that the Pentagon take charge of all major disaster
response and relief. The response to the devastation in New Orleans
was itself delayed until the US military was able to mass large number
of combat-equipped troopsa delay that caused immense suffering
and not a few deaths for those trapped in the city.
In the aftermath
of the hurricane disaster, Bush and other administration officials have
repeatedly urged Congress to repeal or amend the Posse Comitatus Act,
an 1878 statute that bars the use the military in domestic policing,
except in the case of suppressing an insurrection.
The Bush administration
is attempting to take advantage of growing concern over a potential
pandemic to advance a political agenda that has nothing to do with the
threat to public health.
In a closed-door
briefing to Congress last week, Health and Human Services Secretary
Michael Leavitt said that in the US an avian flu outbreak could kill
as many as 2 million, while requiring as many as 10 million hospitalizations.
Over the last eight
years, avian influenza has been reported in 11 countries, most of them
in Asia. The flu has been spread by migratory birds, with recent reported
cases in Siberia.
While killing hundreds
of millions of birds, the current H5N1 strain of avian flu has spread
to only approximately 100 humans, some 60 of whom died. Until now, most
human victims have been infected directly from birds, with little evidence
of transmission from humans to humans, the prerequisite for a pandemic.
Nonetheless, scientists
have warned for years that the deadly virus could mutate into a form
easily transmitted between humans, putting millions of lives at risk,
and many are now expressing near certainty that this will happen. Science
magazine reported recently that according to expert opinion the odds
of a global outbreak are 100 percent.
In one grim indication
of the seriousness with which world governments are taking the threat,
the British press revealed recently that officials in the Blair government
are making contingency plans for the erection of mass mortuaries that
could deal with the bodies of as many as 700,000 people.
In France, meanwhile,
the government has bought some 200 million protective facemasks and
sufficient quantities of drugs to cover the entire population.
Washington, however,
has done relatively little in the way of preparation. US health agencies
reportedly have just 2 million doses of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that
has proven effective in combating the H5N1 virus. This is barely enough
for 1 percent of the American population. While the US Senate has passed
legislation to purchase large quantities of the medicine, the supply
is limited. It is produced solely by the global pharmaceutical giant
Roche Holding AG of Switzerland, and Washingtons orders have come
in after those of a number of countries in Europe and elsewhere.
Ironically, the
belated US attempt to secure a greater share of the drug could contribute
to the spread of any future pandemic. Health experts have stressed that
the best chance for combating it would be to massively treat those in
the immediate area of the first human outbreak. WHO stockpiles are very
low, however, and the monopolization of drugs by wealthier countries
is likely to make that impossible.
While other US funds
are being allocated for the production of vaccines, public health experts
warn that the development of a vaccine effective in countering the current
virus could take years.
The government has
delayed for years issuing a comprehensive pandemic influenza plan, leaving
open such questions as what role federal agencies would take in purchasing
and distributing drug supplies to combat the virus. The delay has left
state and local health departments unable to develop their own emergency
plans.
The US public health-care
system, already stretched to the limit after decades of budget cuts
and privatization, is ill-equipped to confront a mass flu outbreak.
The much-touted concern with the threat of biological or chemical weapons
attacks by terrorists, meanwhile, has been accompanied by sharp cuts
to agencies dealing with the spread of disease, such as the Center for
Disease Controls emerging infectious disease program.
Crucial to any response
to such a pandemic is what is known as surge capacity, the
health-care systems ability to receive a sudden influx of mass
casualties. For-profit health care in the US, however, has ruthlessly
cut back on excess capacity, slashing the number of available hospital
beds by about a third over the past 25 years.
Successive governments
have accelerated these cutbacks, viewing public health as synonymous
with big government and a convenient area to slash spending
in order to pay for tax cuts and militarism.
Some public health
experts have warned that the government is seriously underestimating
the economic and social impact of a pandemic, which could include wholesale
closures of factories and the disruption of transportation, food supplies
and other essential functions.
Avian flu
could be the Katrina of medicine, warned John Bartlett, chief
of the infectious-diseases division of Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine.
As in the Katrina
disaster, the Bush administrations response to the flu threat
combines criminal incompetence and negligence with conspiracies against
the American people.
The administration
is seizing upon every social crisis, both real and potential, to press
for the unrestricted power to impose martial law in the United States.
Significantly, neither the ostensible political opposition in the Democratic
Party nor the mass media has subjected these proposalsincluding
the absurd call for using troops against the fluto probing criticism.
Within Americas
ruling establishment, there is a growing sense that economic and social
crises, combined with the unprecedented class polarization between the
financial elite and the masses of working people, are creating conditions
for social upheavals. The political response is an ever-greater turn
toward the methods of police-state dictatorship.