Cartoon – Indicted not Knighted
Category Archives: Judgement
Cartoon – Failure was an Option
Trump: U.S. will terminate relationship with the World Health Organization in wake of Covid-19 pandemic
President Trump said Friday the U.S. would halt its funding of the World Health Organization and pull out of the agency, accusing it of protecting China as the coronavirus pandemic took off. The move has alarmed health experts, who say the decision will undermine efforts to improve the health of people around the world.
In an address in the Rose Garden, Trump said the WHO had not made reforms that he said would have helped the global health agency stop the coronavirus from spreading around the world.
“We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” Trump said. “The world needs answers from China on the virus.”
It’s not immediately clear whether the president can fully withdraw U.S. funding for the WHO without an act of Congress, which typically controls all federal government spending. Democratic lawmakers have argued that doing so would be illegal, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threatened last month that such a move would be “swiftly challenged.”
The United States has provided roughly 15% of the WHO’s total funding over its current two-year budget period.
The WHO has repeatedly said it was committed to a review of its response, but after the pandemic had ebbed. Last month, Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said the “postmortem” on the pandemic should wait until the emergency was over.
As the Trump administration’s response to pandemic has come under greater scrutiny, with testing problems and a lack of coordination in deploying necessary supplies, Trump has sought to cast further blame on China and the WHO for failing to snuff out the spread when the virus was centered in China.
During his remarks, Trump alleged, without evidence, that China pressured WHO to mislead the world about the virus. Experts say that if the U.S. leaves the WHO, the influence of China will only grow.
“The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government,” Trump said. “China’s coverup of the Wuhan virus allowed the disease to spread all over the world, instigating a global pandemic that has cost more than 100,000 American lives, and over a million lives worldwide.” (That last claim is not true; globally, there have been about 360,000 confirmed deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.)
When Trump earlier this month threatened to yank U.S. funding in a letter, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, would only say during a media briefing that the agency was reviewing it. But he and other officials stressed that the agency had a small budget — about $2.3 billion every year — relative to the impact the agency had and what it was expected to do.
Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program, said the U.S. funding provided the largest proportion of that program’s budget.
“So my concerns today are both for our program and … working on how we improve our funding base for WHO’s core budget,” Ryan said. “Replacing those life-saving funds for front-line health services to some of the most difficult places in the world — we’ll obviously have to work with other partners to ensure those funds can still flow. So this is going to have major implications for delivering essential health services to some of the most vulnerable people in the world and we trust that other donors will if necessary step in to fill that gap.”
Home of the Brave
The Navy Fired the Captain of the Theodore Roosevelt. See How the Crew Responded.
The rousing show of support provided another gripping scene to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic: the rank and file cheering a boss they viewed as putting their safety ahead of his career.
It was a send-off for the ages, with hundreds of sailors aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt cheering Capt. Brett E. Crozier, the commander who sacrificed his naval career by writing a letter to his superiors demanding more help as the novel coronavirus spread through the ship.
The rousing show of support provided the latest gripping scene to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic: the rank and file shouting their admiration for a boss they viewed as putting their safety ahead of his career.
The memes were quick to sprout on social media. On Reddit, one depicted Captain Crozier forced to choose between rescuing his career or his sailors from a burning building; he chooses his sailors. On Twitter, a slew of videos showed Captain Crozier’s walk down the gangway in Guam, most of them depicting him as a hero struck down by his superiors for trying to save the lives of his crew. “Wrongfully relieved of command but did right by sailors,” wrote Twitter user Dylan Castillo, alongside a video of Captain Crozier leaving his ship.
But in removing Captain Crozier from command, senior Navy officials said they were protecting the historic practice that complaints and requests have to go up a formal chain of command. They argued that by sending his concerns to 20 or 30 people in a message that eventually leaked to news organizations, Captain Crozier showed he was no longer fit to lead the fast-moving effort to treat the crew and clean the ship.
His removal from prestigious command of an aircraft carrier with almost 5,000 crew members has taken on an added significance, as his punishment is viewed by some in the military as indicative of the government’s handling of the entire pandemic, with public officials presenting upbeat pictures of the government’s response, while contrary voices are silenced.
The cheering by the sailors is the most public repudiation of military practices to battle the virus since the pandemic began. At the Pentagon, officials expressed concern about the public image of a Defense Department not doing enough to stay ahead of the curve on the virus.
Notably, the defense of the firing offered by senior Pentagon officials has centered around Captain Crozier not following the chain of command in writing his letter, which found its way to newspapers. In a circuitous explanation, Thomas B. Modly, the acting Navy secretary, said that Captain Crozier’s immediate superior did not know that the captain was going to write the letter, offering that act as an error in leadership and one of the reasons the Navy had lost confidence in the Roosevelt captain.
But a Navy official familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly about it said that the captain had repeatedly asked his superiors for speedy action to evacuate the ship. His letter, the official said, came because the Navy was still minimizing the risk.
Mr. Modly insisted that his firing the captain for writing a letter asking for more help does not mean that subordinate officers are not allowed to raise criticisms and ask for assistance. “To our commanding officers,” Mr. Modly told reporters on Thursday, “it would be a mistake to view this decision as somehow not supportive of your duty to report problems, request help, protect your crews, challenge assumptions as you see fit.”
But the removal of Captain Crozier will likely have a chilling effect on the willingness of commanders to bring bad news to their superiors.
“There’s no question they had the authority to remove him,” Kathleen H. Hicks, a former top Pentagon official in the Obama administration, said in an email. “The issue is one of poor judgment in choosing to do so. They are fueling mistrust in leader transparency, among service members, families, and surrounding/hosting communities.”
HENRY KOTULA 