Challenges

As a traditional buy and hold Dow Jones Investor and a patriot, I woke up today with a headache and the worry that the market was in free fall. Our normally orderly nation seems on the brink of chaos, riddled with self-doubt. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says the world at large is threatened by twin plagues, Ebola and ISIS. With due respect to the president, he must bear part of the responsibility. Ever since the day he played golf before the tears were dry among those mourning the beheading of an American journalist, Mr. Obama has seemed a day late and a dollar short. It took him six weeks before he recognized that ISIS had conquered a huge swath of Iraq and Syria. It took him two weeks to grasp the urgency need for firm guidance to fight Ebola’s contagion of disease and fear. And it took him months to cancel his long list of scheduled fund-raisers to stay in the White House last night to demonstrate to the worried nation that he was on the job. Now he has to act decisively to confront the ‘twin plagues’ cited by the U.N. High Commissioner. On ISIS, the president must use any means necessary to save the heroic Kurds defending embattled Kobani Syria. He cannot let Kobani fall to the ISIS savages. And he must appoint an Ebola Czar to take firm control of our scattered and panicked response to the African epidemic before it becomes a world pandemic. Lt. General Russell Honore (retired) is the man for the job. The former commander of the U.S. Army First Division, he brought order out of the chaos of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He is an expert in infectious diseases and bio warfare. He can integrate the civilian/military response to the crisis and he is ready, willing and able to help his country fight Hurricane Ebola. Mr. President, snap out of your languid affectation. This is not the time to be too cool for school.