Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Lifson's idea
Thomas Lifson at American Thinker is worried that the SoCal fires may have been set by a Soldier of Allah. It's a reasonable suspicion, but I don't buy it.
I'm uncomfortable to find myself less paranoid about Mohammedan intentions than the Establishmentarian Lifson, who is often quoted by Rush! The standard Establishment line is to stay "above" those awful paranoid Birchers, even though 80% of the Bircher suspicions have turned out to be true.
Still, I don't buy it in this case because there isn't enough glory in the connection. Osama's boys want to have full credit for doing the whole job, and a wildfire is almost entirely Nature's work. When the Santa Ana winds blow, there will be wildfires in SoCal whether anyone starts them or not.
The Japs used wildfires a few times in WW2, launching incendiary balloons from ships, which drifted to Oregon and started fires. They abandoned the trick for the same reason: the cause of a fire often remains mysterious, and other fires were happening without their efforts. When you're running a war, you want people to see your victories clearly. ¶ 11:33 AM
I'm uncomfortable to find myself less paranoid about Mohammedan intentions than the Establishmentarian Lifson, who is often quoted by Rush! The standard Establishment line is to stay "above" those awful paranoid Birchers, even though 80% of the Bircher suspicions have turned out to be true.
Still, I don't buy it in this case because there isn't enough glory in the connection. Osama's boys want to have full credit for doing the whole job, and a wildfire is almost entirely Nature's work. When the Santa Ana winds blow, there will be wildfires in SoCal whether anyone starts them or not.
The Japs used wildfires a few times in WW2, launching incendiary balloons from ships, which drifted to Oregon and started fires. They abandoned the trick for the same reason: the cause of a fire often remains mysterious, and other fires were happening without their efforts. When you're running a war, you want people to see your victories clearly. ¶ 11:33 AM
