Ebola Shows How Our Connections Can Make Us Vulnerable

It seems like we, in America, like to have our cake and eat it to. We want the benefits of access to the resources from and strategic control over other countries but without any mess or demands. We should note that such access and control provided the main reasons for the 9-11 attacks. This is not to say that those attacks were justified. It's just that neither are many of the means we use to acquire access and exercise control.

Since we haven't changed our desire to use these connections, we continue to apply force to get what we want. And we depend on the same force to enable us to live in denial of the consequences of our actions. We do this by increasing the powers of both Homeland Security and our military. We also do this by providing military aid to those nations that follow orders. And for the most part, that strategy has allowed us to return to a state of denial regarding our connections with others and the negative effects they can have at home.

But now we have Ebola and the times are changing. Whereas in the past, Ebola breakouts have occurred where we have no connections in Africa. But that is no longer the case and Homeland Security cannot protect us from this threat. It is our connections with the infected parts of Africa that have brought Ebola to our country.  And while the current existence of Ebola in America might be eradicated with minimal suffering and losses, there can be no doubt that future cases of Ebola, and perhaps other diseases, can and will occur here. Why? Because we have connections that we wish to maintain.

Now, if only this lesson learned from Ebola coming to America can be generalized to our other connections around the world, we might learn to be careful about the kinds of connections we keep. Perhaps we would cut our foreign military aid to those countries that commit human rights abuses.  Perhaps we would carefully craft our assistance to Israel so that we are supporting neither the Occupation nor its expansion of the settlements. And, perhaps, we would also stop supporting proxy leaders and attempting to commit coups for strategic control or business purposes.

Our connections with Africa has caused a dreadful disease to make its way across the ocean. And though the fortune we have spent to keep terrorism at bay has succeeded to this point, it won't always be that way. So just perhaps we might want to eliminate the kinds of connections that motivates people to want to lash out and strike back at us. After all, Ebola has proven that we are vulnerable.