Smokey the Burning Bush to George: Only you can prevent terrorist attacks or forest fires
On Christmas day I was riding my bike on Maui and I saw a sign of just 4 words, “Dry Area Prevent Fires.” The first two words or first half was quite clear, a declarative statement, this area is dry. The second half was more instructional, seemingly suggesting I should prevent fires there. Seeing as it was a very brief sign, it pretty much left it up to me how to proceed in following that instruction, command, or suggestion.
It brought to mind the old Smokey the Bear campaign from when I was a child against forest fires: Smokey the Bear says “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Even as a child, the logic in that statement was quite obviously faulty. I said, as I am sure many to most others did in response, if only I can prevent forest fires, then the rest of you are pretty much screwed because though I was not sure what I would be doing in the next week, next year, or for the rest of my life, I was fairly certain it was not going to be hanging around in forests preventing fires.
Here it was many years later and I once again was being implored by a government campaign, in this case a county road sign, to somehow do something to prevent fires. If I was to imply the rest, how I am to do that, I would hope it would only be asking me the minimal possible instead of hanging around the sign day and night looking for fires to put out. It, I hope, was merely asking me not to do anything stupid while there which would cause a fire; not to throw a lit match down for instance or to discard a lit cigarette carelessly.
That is really all one can do in that situation. No one, not me, not Smokey the Bear, not Jesus, not the President of the United States, no one can prevent forest fires. They will happen, like wars, plagues, and terrorist attacks, and nothing anyone can do will prevent them. The best we can do or ask anyone to do is to not do anything stupid to cause them, not to throw matches on dangerous areas, not to forget to put out camp fires, not to drop bombs on tinderboxes.
Though the President of the United States would like to take credit for a lack of terrorist attacks, mostly the best he can realistically do to prevent them is to not do anything stupid to make them more likely, such as bombing countries which have not attacked us, occupying them, watching over regimes we put in place unable to provide safety, electricity, clean drinking water, health care, or anything we associate with everyday life, while non-government militias led by people we do not like and do not like us further their control by actually keeping these people alive and semi-secure in ways their “legitimate” government, one that to most people there is complicit and tainted with deferring to an illegal occupation force, us, cannot do and is not doing.
After going from “We are winning” to “We are not losing” the war in Iraq which is not a war, not a Civil War of Iraqis, nor a war of us against Iraq, with an occupation force which is not an occupation of their country but “liberators” which the majority of their public believe shooting us on sight is justified and an overwhelmingly majority of them want us to leave no matter what the consequences are to them. At least for a change they would not have us to referee and perpetually prolong indefinitely the “birth pangs” but instead would eventually have one side or another “win” what is left of that destroyed country. But it would not be won by the people we want to win, war proponents or excusers would say, thus the continued “conflict” which is not a war is a “good thing,” kind of like when Iran and Iraq were warring with each other and we kept switching sides of who to help to keep that one going into extra innings. But who do we want to win? The Shiites which would side with Iran, our new enemy du jour, or the Sunni's who have been causing the most US casualties and make up the backbone of the resistance fighters?
To say as the new media campaign offensive states, “We are not winning but we are not losing,” which like all other government statements is embraced enthusiastically and uncritically by American media corporations, what is the status quo we are holding? All government reports of the CIA, Defense Department, the “independent” Iraq Study Group, they all concur that the terrorist groups have never been stronger because of how Bush has been going about “preventing”terrorist attacks. Now Al-Quida has become so strong in Iraq we are being asked to negotiate with them where before they were virtually non-existent. A conservative estimate is that the people that want to kill and attack Americans now is ten times what it was before the Iraq war by the CIA's own supposedly leaked reports which have not been denied and have been echoed in other government studies.
How is a 1000% percent increase in less than four years of the might of our supposed enemies in the “War on Terror,” not to be stated as us “losing” ground? If we are not winning and not losing, what kind of ground are we holding, what are we “on track” toward?
So what “not doing anything stupid” course has Bush suggested to counter this non-loss of ground? Bombing Iran of course. It seems most Americans cannot grasp the monumental stupidity of that course of action or the suicidal effects it would have on every aspect of the American Economy, except for of course, the oil companies which would see profits soar the higher the price of oil climbs. (Want to end the insanity now, how about the higher the price of oil, the less profits for the oil companies, the less risk of war, the higher the profits?) To make it simple enough for the Average American who gets what passes for news on networks to understand, not all Moslem's are the same type, as George Bush found after being President for a year. Shiites and Sunnis are like Protestants and Catholics, and like the latter, have done their share of killing each other, as is going on now in Iraq.
By bombing one country, Iraq, which had not attacked us, we have made most Sunni's, half the Muslim world, very pissed off at us and generally want to kill us. To remedy this or improve upon this by keeping us safe and escalating (but “Surge” sounds so much more virile) the War on Terror, Bush has decided to attack yet another country which has not attacked us, the Shiite country of Iran, which should even the score and make the other half of the Muslim world want to get revenge on us just as badly.
Lord knows when we will get a President would not only know not to do anything stupid to “unintentionally” wreak havoc and destruction all over an area of critical importance to us, destroying our credibility there, making our Muslim allies rightly nervous if not imperiled, but might actually instead try to work to correct the mistakes and stop the hemorrhaging of what history will show was the greatest wound to America, if not any country, which was self-inflicted by so few “democratically” without shame, without fear of accountability, but with one hell of a war profit packed retirement portfolio.
It brought to mind the old Smokey the Bear campaign from when I was a child against forest fires: Smokey the Bear says “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Even as a child, the logic in that statement was quite obviously faulty. I said, as I am sure many to most others did in response, if only I can prevent forest fires, then the rest of you are pretty much screwed because though I was not sure what I would be doing in the next week, next year, or for the rest of my life, I was fairly certain it was not going to be hanging around in forests preventing fires.
Here it was many years later and I once again was being implored by a government campaign, in this case a county road sign, to somehow do something to prevent fires. If I was to imply the rest, how I am to do that, I would hope it would only be asking me the minimal possible instead of hanging around the sign day and night looking for fires to put out. It, I hope, was merely asking me not to do anything stupid while there which would cause a fire; not to throw a lit match down for instance or to discard a lit cigarette carelessly.
That is really all one can do in that situation. No one, not me, not Smokey the Bear, not Jesus, not the President of the United States, no one can prevent forest fires. They will happen, like wars, plagues, and terrorist attacks, and nothing anyone can do will prevent them. The best we can do or ask anyone to do is to not do anything stupid to cause them, not to throw matches on dangerous areas, not to forget to put out camp fires, not to drop bombs on tinderboxes.
Though the President of the United States would like to take credit for a lack of terrorist attacks, mostly the best he can realistically do to prevent them is to not do anything stupid to make them more likely, such as bombing countries which have not attacked us, occupying them, watching over regimes we put in place unable to provide safety, electricity, clean drinking water, health care, or anything we associate with everyday life, while non-government militias led by people we do not like and do not like us further their control by actually keeping these people alive and semi-secure in ways their “legitimate” government, one that to most people there is complicit and tainted with deferring to an illegal occupation force, us, cannot do and is not doing.
After going from “We are winning” to “We are not losing” the war in Iraq which is not a war, not a Civil War of Iraqis, nor a war of us against Iraq, with an occupation force which is not an occupation of their country but “liberators” which the majority of their public believe shooting us on sight is justified and an overwhelmingly majority of them want us to leave no matter what the consequences are to them. At least for a change they would not have us to referee and perpetually prolong indefinitely the “birth pangs” but instead would eventually have one side or another “win” what is left of that destroyed country. But it would not be won by the people we want to win, war proponents or excusers would say, thus the continued “conflict” which is not a war is a “good thing,” kind of like when Iran and Iraq were warring with each other and we kept switching sides of who to help to keep that one going into extra innings. But who do we want to win? The Shiites which would side with Iran, our new enemy du jour, or the Sunni's who have been causing the most US casualties and make up the backbone of the resistance fighters?
To say as the new media campaign offensive states, “We are not winning but we are not losing,” which like all other government statements is embraced enthusiastically and uncritically by American media corporations, what is the status quo we are holding? All government reports of the CIA, Defense Department, the “independent” Iraq Study Group, they all concur that the terrorist groups have never been stronger because of how Bush has been going about “preventing”terrorist attacks. Now Al-Quida has become so strong in Iraq we are being asked to negotiate with them where before they were virtually non-existent. A conservative estimate is that the people that want to kill and attack Americans now is ten times what it was before the Iraq war by the CIA's own supposedly leaked reports which have not been denied and have been echoed in other government studies.
How is a 1000% percent increase in less than four years of the might of our supposed enemies in the “War on Terror,” not to be stated as us “losing” ground? If we are not winning and not losing, what kind of ground are we holding, what are we “on track” toward?
So what “not doing anything stupid” course has Bush suggested to counter this non-loss of ground? Bombing Iran of course. It seems most Americans cannot grasp the monumental stupidity of that course of action or the suicidal effects it would have on every aspect of the American Economy, except for of course, the oil companies which would see profits soar the higher the price of oil climbs. (Want to end the insanity now, how about the higher the price of oil, the less profits for the oil companies, the less risk of war, the higher the profits?) To make it simple enough for the Average American who gets what passes for news on networks to understand, not all Moslem's are the same type, as George Bush found after being President for a year. Shiites and Sunnis are like Protestants and Catholics, and like the latter, have done their share of killing each other, as is going on now in Iraq.
By bombing one country, Iraq, which had not attacked us, we have made most Sunni's, half the Muslim world, very pissed off at us and generally want to kill us. To remedy this or improve upon this by keeping us safe and escalating (but “Surge” sounds so much more virile) the War on Terror, Bush has decided to attack yet another country which has not attacked us, the Shiite country of Iran, which should even the score and make the other half of the Muslim world want to get revenge on us just as badly.
Lord knows when we will get a President would not only know not to do anything stupid to “unintentionally” wreak havoc and destruction all over an area of critical importance to us, destroying our credibility there, making our Muslim allies rightly nervous if not imperiled, but might actually instead try to work to correct the mistakes and stop the hemorrhaging of what history will show was the greatest wound to America, if not any country, which was self-inflicted by so few “democratically” without shame, without fear of accountability, but with one hell of a war profit packed retirement portfolio.
posted by Jared DuBois | 6:13 PM
