Obama uses war on Ebola to illustrate fight against non-conventional threats

WASHINGTON POST by Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson                             Feb. 13, 2015

WASHINGTON --If there is to be war, the fight against Ebola is President Obama’s type of war. The enemy fires no bullets and carries no bombs; it doesn’t use social media to recruit fighters and rally supporters. And the fighting can best be done by intelligent professionals who don’t try to kill people, but to save them.

On Wednesday, Obama celebrated the progress against the deadly virus since the administration launched a military and civilian effort in September. While the president emphasized it was too soon to declare “mission accomplished” — as President George W. Bush did about Iraq in 2003 — Obama said “we’re shifting our focus from fighting the epidemic to now extinguishing it.”

Wednesday’s event provided fresh evidence of how the White House has elevated non-conventional threats — including pandemics and climate change — to the top of its national security agenda, while de-emphasizing more traditional threats. In an interview the Web site Vox posted this week, Obama said the media “absolutely” overstates the threat of terrorism compared to long-term problems such as global warming and disease that cross national borders.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2015/02/11/84c23f90-b20a-11e4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html