Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan are again expressing their moral outrage over the effort of the international community to vaccinate their children against polio. In the latest case, at least 12 security officials were killed and nine others injured in an ambush on a clearly marked medical convoy in the Jamrud area of the Khyber tribal region. It appears that both murder and denying children polio vaccines are viewed by these men as a pure expression of faith and morality.
The militants hit the convoy with improvised explosive & devices (IEDs) and then racked the convoy with automatic fire. They then prevented the wounded from being removed for medical treatment.
We previously discussed how the Taliban is opposing similar efforts violently in Afghanistan.
Polio is an epidemic in Pakistan by Islamic rebels have killed over 40 health care workers to prevent them from protecting children.
The United States has been accused by some of responsibility for these attacks. The CIA used a fake polio vaccine program to hunt for Osama Bin Laden and obtain DNA from suspects. The attacks on health care workers sharply increased as a result with militants treating all such efforts as presumptive Western intelligence operations. The use of a health care program remains controversial. The use of reporters or health care professionals endangers thousands of people who should be treated as neutral parties in these disputes. This, of course, does not excuse these fanatics or justifies their actions. They continue to use religion as a rationalization for murder and other atrocities. Thus it is not surprising that they would use the Bin Laden raid in the same fashion. However, I would be interested to know if anyone at the CIA raised the danger to health care workers if they used the polio program as part of their operation.
Randy Lee, There are followers of Islam and Islamists. Islamists are savages who kill people, cut off hands, etc. That is savagery. Followers of Islam are not savages.
The overwhelming number of mothers not vaccinating their children are the ilk I described. We had this debate previously and it was proven true. I’m not going to prove it again for agenda driven lemmings.
Based upon how WHO was prostituted…. I don’t think the level of trust is there….and I don’t really blame them for wanting them out….
Randy Lee bandies about “genetic purity”. Randy Lee will now submit to blood tests to determine if he is clean of impurities, and he will have no say in what qualifies as “impurities.”. His words otherwise carry no weight, as we will not hear from the Impure, but will happily suggest a number of unlit personal places Randy Lee is free to stow his notions of “genetic purity.”
When will you tiny-minded “individualists” realize we’re not going to let you cloud up our public square with your sick kids? You do not live on this earth by yourself and you never will. We are all intimately connected. Try to act like it.
#EUGENICSFAIL #PUBLICHEALTHFAIL
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/13/a-maddening-case-of-the-measles-in-orthodox-jewish-brooklyn.html
Measles outbreak in orthodox Jewish communities. Hardly liberal tree huggers.
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217746942/texas-megachurch-at-center-of-measles-outbreak
Texas mega church at the center of a measles outbreak, hardly tree hugging liberals.
Nick writes: “Islamists are savages.”
What a bigoted generalization! Come to my door with your vaccination for me or my children and watch the savage come out in me! By the way, I am not religious in the least, and certainly not Islamic, or Christian, or ……………
These patriots of their country, regardless of their religious persuasion, have every right to protect their nation’s genetic purity.
When will you do-gooders ever realize you need to butt out of other people’s choices?
It is atheist, liberal, tree huggers in the US not vaccinating their children, not Christian fundamentalists. So, there’s that.
To compare Christian fundamentalists w/ Islamists is simply intellectually dishonest and driven by agenda. Islamists are savages. Not the same ballpark, not the same time zone!
Fundamentalits of all religions act insanely and against societal norms, until they become the norm, as in these countries. We and western health care workers need to end their programs in these countries until the country gives them protection against such attacks, which may not be possible as they seem to view the workers as enemy combatants. When my daughter was in Afghanistan, there were times she had to go on a blood gathering run off the base, I was happy to hear when it was on a helicopter, instead of in a convoy. Looks like Pakistan is going the way of Afghanistan at an accelerated pace now. Time to leave these countries once and for all. Stop all aid.
As for immunizations, I don’t think it’s wise to go back to the bad old days of epidemics. Every physician I know immunizes their own children. It may not be perfect but considering the alternative…
For those who think that vaccines are great, watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1m3TjokVU4
If vaccines are so great, why do they have to be mandated?
The scientific community is not totally on the side of vaccines.
There are what appear to be legitimate claims that millions of people who were given polio vaccines in the 1950’s were also given a cancer virus.
The right to decide for yourself and your family is sancrsanct.
Watch the movie before you speak your biases.
Ah islam the religion of insanity
it’s worth remembering this form of barbarism also has nuclear weapons. It’s as near to intractable as it gets.
Several issues converge here. The US military needs to be reduced and refined. The ability to make military statements with increasing accuracy and mobility, intelligence and surgical efficiency, and without placing American soldiers in the streets as policemen, defines the future of US military influence in the world.
There are no more super power struggles. There is no need for tens of thousands of tanks and field artillery pieces. The tanks and artillery should be enhanced, improved, and kept for the increasingly rare situations where they might be used.
There is a need to be able to find and identify the enemy, locate and target the enemy, and take out the enemy without slaughtering innocents. America’s ability to do this is growing exponentially. The focus and funding should be in this direction. We do not need twelve super carriers. We need to be able to put up to ten thousand seal level trained troops into a situation over night and take them out as immediately. We need to be able to send in teams to take out enemy combatants or drone them.
The days of showing the flag are over. The US must continue the fight against this cancer of terrorists but just as with the medical fight against cancer, be less invasive and more selective.
Amy:
It’s really fundamentalist religion at the root here. Just like Christian fundamentalists hate stem cell research. We’d be better without any ideology that promotes fact-free reasoning and many folks are catching on–finally.
During the cold war, we stood against a rational enemy on a global field. We studied that enemy, we came to know that enemy, and we used their projected rational responses against them. And we did win.
The generation of today and tomorrow now faces a decidedly irrational enemy but again on a global field of battle. They are engaged in a very real war (War is designed to kill people and break things). But those who should stand against them have already lost this very real war if they pretend that Islamic fundamentalists just need us to be “nice” and understand their position.
We must face both; who they really are and what they really want.
Let’s get more accurate about the so called vaccination program the CIA used. It was NOT and actual program, but a survey that they were using as cover. The Muslim extremists hate all western medicine so they hardly need any excuse to kill health care workers. The kill them for sport, and any other excuse they can find. They also do not have the Geneva Convention on treatment of wounded, they simply kill and torture them.
It’s Islam at root here: “The case against vaccination is first an Islamic one, based on Islamic ethos regarding the perfection of the natural human body’s immune defence system, empowered by great and prophetic guidance to avoid most infections.”
http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2011/01/20/islam-vaccines-and-health-2/
The children are the big losers here but that doesn’t seem to matter to these “soldiers of God”. As to the US’s “responsibility”, these violent fanatics were killing people who were trying to help their people long before the Bin Laden situation. These fanatics are so “courageous” that they seem to enjoy killing defenseless aid workers. Stop giving them cover.
Perhaps then the pre-emptive ATROCITIES by those mad-dog fanatics are justified too?
Don’t you realize they will do anything, every chance they get and the more depraved the prouder they are of themselves.