By Brigitte L. Nacos
Want to know how out of bounce so-called American “terrorism
experts” are with their explanations of the roots and causes of the very terrorism
we are facing today? Take a look at Paul
Krugman’s column in today’s New York Times and you’ll learn about the
self-serving counter-propaganda that permeates both the extreme
political strata and its like-minded media servants that make great efforts to
convince their audiences that they stand for reality and truth and patriotism
and American values. These are in my view the most important sentences in Krugman’s opinion piece:
“These days terrorism is the first
refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of
Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent
failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.
National healthcare: Breeding ground
for terror?” read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and
the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care
promotes terrorism.
While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens.
I say conscience, because the health care issue is, most of all, about morality.
That’s what we learn from the overwhelming response to Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” Health care reformers should, by all means, address the anxieties of middle-class Americans, their growing and justified fear of finding themselves uninsured or having their insurers deny coverage when they need it most. But reformers shouldn’t focus only on self-interest. They should also appeal to Americans’ sense of decency and humanity.”
Ah, well--do not hold your breath. I recall recent
conversation with entirely nice, well-to-do physicians and successful people in other fields
about what I believe is the need for fundamental reforms that make
for mandatory universal health care. But the opposition always counters with scare tactics charging that this will come down to "socialized medicine" a la Western Europe.
As for Western Europe, I have first-hand experience with my own parents who had the best health care one could possible wish for in the last months of their lives. Indeed, as I first traveled back to my native country to visit my terminally ill father, I wondered why the rest of my family over there did not ask me to contribute to what I witnessed to be first-rate care. I was told that this was all covered by his standard and mandatory health insurance my father had paid in for during all his working years. Similarly, when my mother’s health deteriorated more recently, she received the most excellent care—again covered by mandatory health insurance.
I have never heard of a more obscene argument than the one that characterizes public health care systems as incubators of terrorism! This is one more attempt of the old regime to protect the lucrative rule of the privileged and wealthy class at the expense of the squeezed middle-class and the disadvantaged lower class—including illegal immigrants who are mostly exploited for the benefit of the wealthy.
It may be, no it is very difficult to counter the breeding grounds of
contemporary terrorists—but blaming and resisting mandatory health care systems
that are entirely in tune with the tenets of Judean-Christian teachings and with widely accepted humanitarian
tenets will not do-- regardless of all the efforts by the well-organized
medical establishment, insurance companies, etc., and their ideological counterparts at Fox News and other
media.
Terrorists have many grievances, motives, and causes. Neither the British
health care system nor similar ones are among them nor do the people who run them invite or sympathize with terrorists. Shame on those who make misleading arguments at the expense of the many who need "socialized medicine" but are brainwashed into rejecting it.
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