The new ‘national security’ issue?

November 4, 2007

From time to time, advocates of one policy position or another will try to connect an unrelated matter to national security. For example, you might hear someone say immigration is a national-security issue because we don’t want terrorists sneaking across the border illegally. Or energy policy is a national-security issue because we don’t want to have to rely on the Middle East for oil.

Some are less plausible than others. John McCain, for example, recently insisted that “the rights of the unborn [have] a lot to do with national security.” He had trouble explaining why.

This one’s even worse. (thanks to reader M.K.)

A former surgeon general warned Friday that America’s obesity epidemic is a national security problem as the more than 9 million overweight and obese children in the country threaten to shrink the pool of eligible servicemen and women.

Tucson’s Dr. Richard Carmona, who finished his term as surgeon general in 2006 and now chairs the Strategies to Overcome and Prevent Obesity Alliance, said that obesity is no longer an individual problem but one that “undermines the strength of our nation.” […]

The rapidly growing population of overweight, obese and physically unfit children is starting to affect the military, Carmona said. He noted that obesity is one of the most common reasons servicemen cannot fully perform their duties.

Carmona added that obesity is “the terror within.”

Now, I can appreciate the fact that obesity is a serious public-health issue, but does it also have to be a national-security issue? Are we really worried that we won’t have enough svelte Americans to serve in the military? It seems like a stretch.

Strangely, it can be a national security issue. At the rate things are going and considering the US will be occupying Iraq for a long time, the US needs a lot of infantry. Infantry needs a lot of folks who can run, have strong backs, quick thinking/reflexes and decent eyesight (only reason I didn’t sign up in the reserves) which you’re not going to find among obese teenagers.

However, this is a really dumb one. One can point out that what’s the point in reducing the obesity problem if they’re going to die young anyway in combat.

Max Blumenthal showed in a little movie that lot of College Repubs could be infantry.

  • That means that Republicans are a national security issue because so few of them choose to serve. I’d imagine that there are still more overweight people than Republicans in the military.

  • Don’t worry. Proliferation of robotic systems such as UAVs probably mean the military will be needing more and more couch potatoes to run them.

  • Yeah, that robotic stuff works real good, it’s no wonder that Donald Rumsfeld was so enamored of it:

    From the South African, “Saturday Star” newspaper, dated Oct 13th, 2007:

    A female artillery officer risked her life at Lohatlha on Friday, in a desperate bid to prevent members of her battery dying from their own anti-aircraft gun, the Saturday Star reported on Saturday.

    The brave officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun.

    It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.

    By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazine eight soldiers were killed and 11 injured.

    A ninth soldier, a woman died moments after landing in Bloemfontein, after being airlifted by a South African Air Force helicopter to Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein. – Sapa

  • I had a pretty scary moment once when the brakes on my car failed. That’s a problem with machines. They don’t always work the way they’re supposed to — even more of a problem when it’s a machine filled with bullets or bombs.

  • I am struck by the OBVIOUS…

    We live in a nation of information/sensory overload. These folks, and many on the Right, have correctly sussed out out that if you don’t scare the the unwashed masses with rhetoric, they won’t look up from their bud’n’barbecue long enough to pay attention.

    Crying Wolf may not work as well as it did in ’02, but it still works better than most attempts to appeal to rational thought processes that require more than 45 seconds of analysis.

  • Barrett Wolf, good point but, Steve’s post highlights the fact that everything and anything is now being construed as a “national security issue.” This inflation of rhetoric leads to a trivialization of words until we have the ridiculous sight of our president invoking World War III with respect to a country the size and might of Iran.

  • I suppose someone will next argue that the Constitution is a security issue—because the First Amendment allows someone to say “no” to the recruiter when he shows up in a local high school.

    Next, I’ll be labelled a security issue because I’m teaching my children that Mr. Bush’s War is inherently, ethically, and morally wrong.

    Then people with various disabilities will be labelled security issues, because their disabilities prevent them from serving.

    And history, I believe, held a special place for the “Untermenschen” of the previous century….

  • In a fascist state everything impinges on national security. That’s one way of defining the degree to which we’ve become a fascist state, the degree to which we are permanently on wartime status. Remember “Lucky Strike green has gone to war”? We’re been at war or preparing for war since 1941. The Neo-cons talk openly of their hopes and plans for New American Empire. And every time some Senator or Congressman tries to remind us of what this country is all about Pelosi takes our only weapon off the table or Reid simply tosses in the towel. Bush has his Praetorian Guard in Iraq and is now threatening further mischief in Iran (and then??). If the Bush regime doesn’t talk national security, they’d have to resort to talking greed, and that doesn’t sell very well to electorate, especially since there are so few beneficiaries. So “National Security” it is and will be. For everything.

  • You know. I’m not a parent but somehow “Watch your kid’s diet so he can get chewed up in some clusterfuck of a war,” doesn’t seem to be the correct way to encourage healthy eating habits.

  • I would think the fact that we don’t manufacture anything anymore, that we outsource so much labor, that we import everything and don’t have anything to export, that everything is foreign made, might give pause to the national security worriers, but it doesn’t even seem to occur to them. Or perhaps it’s because it’s inconvenient to corporate America and their dreams of global domination. Who cares about national security when you’ve got six billion potential customers and workers outside the country and only 5% of that inside?

  • I don’t know about national security but obesity directly correlates to ability to pay more for good food. Poor people live on crap like ramen noodles or mac and cheese because it is cheap. The likes of McDonalds for decades hasn’t helped. The less people can afford to buy vegetables or quality bread and grains (WTF is Wonder bread anyway…anyone else wonder about that??) the more and more you will see fatter and fatter people.

    Laziness and lack of understanding of nutrition are causes too, but the few know how to read food labels and heck, just pop something in the micro or open a box of Hamburger Helper and you’re good to go.

    With our country getting dumber and dumber and lazier and lazier, nothing good will come from it. Junk science goes beyond thinking evolution is evil.

  • Junk Politics meets Junk Food meets Junk Science?

    For what it’s worth (having just read The Nasty Bits) Anthony Bourdain made the obesity/security threat argument a few years ago. He, of course, was just being snarky.

  • Some are less plausible than others. John McCain, for example, recently insisted that “the rights of the unborn [have] a lot to do with national security.” He had trouble explaining why.

    I bet a Republican would connect abortion to not enough soldiers. Another reason they might not like it is reducing the ratio of whites to racial minority immigrants.

    Carmona added that obesity is “the terror within.”

    Oh no!

    Any chance this guy wasn’t being a hack, though, and just wants to get his Republican masters to take what he sees as a depressing national health crisis more seriously? Did he take an ethical stand against them on anything? I have trouble keeping track of what all the Surgeon Generals we’ve had have done.

  • Oh, this is a former Surgeon General– seems I’ve got to work on my critical reading skills!

    Anyway, if anyone could tell us anymore about how this guy has done in terms of supporting or not supporting Bush, it would still be helpful.

  • Carmona is right about obesity…
    The problem is he is preaching to a fat choir.

    The real question he should raise is this one:
    Can we have an economy based on constant consumption AND thin people?

    Maybe.
    Maybe not.

    I’ve said it before…
    I will say it again:

    There is only one thing Bush might have been good at as President:
    Using the bully pulpit to encourage Americans to get fit.
    Fitness is the one thing this bully knows well…
    But he has been totally quiet on the subject.
    Totally quiet!

    Why?

    Four reasons:

    1) Because fast food companies pay some of his bills.
    2) Because Americans are on a treadmill of consumption. They need to eat lots to grow the economy lots.
    3) Because unhealthy Americans are good for the medical and pharm economy.
    4) Because the auto and oil industry needs a population that hates walking and cycling.

    Ironically…
    Growing the economy is how we measure our cultural health.
    And that’s why your President…
    a true fitness guru if ever there was one…
    has got absolutely nothing to say about fitness to the American people.
    Nothing!

    How sad and sicko is that?

  • This is right up there with the one about abortion being a national security issue because it’s killing off potential soldiers. That’s right ladies – instead of collecting scrap metal and giving up sugar like folks did during WWII, you can now contribute to the war effort by pumping out as many babies as possible to keep up troop numbers! And hey! All you fat people! Get skinny so you can go die in the war! What’s wrong, ain’t you patriotic?

  • apologies to Godwin’s Law fans but I couldn’t help but think of this sort of thing:

    (from Historyplace.com):

    ” By 1935, about 60 percent of Germany’s young people belonged to the Hitler Youth. Schirach declared it “The Year of Physical Training” and introduced the second major annual HJ event — the Sports Competition. Medals were awarded to youths who performed rigorous athletic drills and met strict physical fitness standards. Every summer, a day would now be set aside as the “Day of the State Youth” for these events.

    Physical fitness, according to Hitler, was much more important for his young people than memorizing “dead facts” in the classroom. In his book Mein Kampf, he stated that “…a less well-educated, but physically healthy individual with a sound, firm character, full of determination and willpower, is more valuable to the Volkish community than an intellectual weakling.”

    School schedules were adjusted to allow for at least one hour of of physical training in the morning and one hour each evening. Prior to this, only two hours per week had been set aside. Hitler also encouraged young boys to take up boxing to heighten their agressiveness.

    Hitler believed tough physical training would instill confidence and that “…this self-confidence must be instilled from childhood into every German. His entire education and training must be designed to convince him of his absolute superiority over others.” He viewed education as a means of raising nationalist enthusiasm in German boys while teaching them to be ready to sacrifice themselves for the Fatherland. Special assemblies were often held in school halls featuring themes of heroism and readiness to die for “the cause.” “

  • ROTFLMLiberalAO at Hypotenuse makes all the right points about this issue. Obesity is a complicated phenomenon; it’s origins, why it is persistent, who benefits from it…. But the underlying message is that it is fairly solvable, compared to our other great threats (global warming, nuclear proliferation, Martian invasion, etc.) But the solution will require leadership and great shifts in education.

    Unfortunately, fitness and health are not good for profits. Pills are profitable. Industrial calories are profitable. If people ate well and exercised, and if preventative medicine was our emphasis, the medical industry would be a sliver of what it is now. People would be happier, healthier, thinner, more productive, sexier, etc.

    As far as the whole “national security” thing, that’s just ridiculous.

  • Oh, this is a former Surgeon General– seems I’ve got to work on my critical reading skills!

    Anyway, if anyone could tell us anymore about how this guy has done in terms of supporting or not supporting Bush, it would still be helpful. — Swan, @15

    From the same article quoted by the CB, but one paragraph lower than the one which informed you that Carmona was was a *former* Surgeon General, comes this snippet:

    “Tucson’s Dr. Richard Carmona, who finished his term as surgeon general in 2006 […]”

    So, OK, I agree; you do need to work on your critical reading skills… How are your critical thinking skills? Based on that quote, can you *guess* whether he’s been supportive/not supportive of Bush?

  • The truly disgusting thing about Mr. Carmona’s statement is that he sees an obesity epidemic as reducing the number of meat hunks the government can throw at their perceived enemies. He could care less about obesity being a detriment to a stranger’s ability to live a healthy fulfilling life. Support, respect, honor for “the troops” is nothing more than a bit of propaganda to Republicans. They’re corporate “Stepford wives” – corporate zombies who’d rather see your brains get blown out than help you use them.

  • So, OK, I agree; you do need to work on your critical reading skills… How are your critical thinking skills? Based on that quote, can you *guess* whether he’s been supportive/not supportive of Bush?

    Libra, it’s still possible he could have quit for his own (non-political reasons) from what we know, and while CB’s (slap-dash?) painting of the guy as a Bush trooped in this post doesn’t necessarily make it so, it explains my tending to lean in the direction of thinking that it’s so, since CB is a relatively credible person.

  • BMI is the most common reason for docking service people’s pay and for restricting their duties.

    So while it may seem far-fetched, it is the number one reason why we’re losing soldiers.

    Of course, the uncounted reason ‘no soldier wants to go to war needlessly’ seems to be a larger issue.

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