What About National Security?

The politicians' single mindedness to equate national security with the military effort, the mindset that nothing matters than war preparation, got the world into the trouble it finds itself today.  Emphasizing war machinery production alone, at the expense of everything else, was sold to the citizenry for far too long.  An element of fear mongering helped the politicians to pour great sums of money into military equipment production, resulting in enormous profits for those who bought the members of their respective Governments.  To add insult to injury, many of the necessities of life, medical equipment, among others were produced by a selection of low labor cost countries, like China and others.  Major manufacturing enterprises were removed from their countries, and established in these low cost offshore lands.  None to little consideration was given to the preparedness in case of a pandemic health issue; all eggs ended up in one basket, so to speak.

Along comes the Corona Virus, and as chance would have it, the problem started, apparently, in the very country, where all the eggs of the world were deposited.  Needless to say in the event of a tragedy, every country serves itself first, and so it was.  The rest of the world was no longer able to take care of its most urgent medical needs.  The fact that the truth of the problem was withheld by the offshore manufacturing center for far too long exacerbated the situation even more.  Naturally, the country with the outbreak of the virus needed the very medical supplies, made for others, first for its own people.

A while back, some genius came up with a new idea and a corresponding buzzword "JIT" (Just In Time [fabrication]), which meant, don't spend money, and pay taxes for items in stock.  Items were fabricated only when an order was received that is to say, the customer no longer carried items in stock, and neither did the manufacturer.  This works great when nobody is in urgent need of the items, however, as the present virus story tells us, it is absolute hell, in the case of an Emergency.  In the case of the US, different agencies had stockpiles of certain items needed by the medical staff but did not see fit to share them without a long delay.  Shame on all involved in the withholding of vital supplies.

So where is our 'national security'?  We hear this national security phrase used over and over; it is even used when politicians want to hide their illegal conduct and/or spying on its own citizens.  As recent history shows we really don't have national security, we are at the mercy of a virus bug, for which we have up to this point in time no real solution, and this after spending 'Trillions' of dollars on national security.

The sad statistic is that the US is still on the upswing of the daily new infection additions, while other countries are daily reducing their additions.  Apparently, the White House is forecasting the death of about 250,000 people.  This must never happen; do we really want to show the world that we are less capable than far lesser countries?