What’s Al Qaeda Got To Do With The California Fires?
Is Al Qaeda to blame for the raging wildfires in California?
The possibility that more than 800 square miles of burned land could be traced back to terrorists was raised on Fox News last week. Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy reported that “an FBI memo from late June of this year is popping up this morning and it is ominous.”
But the memo in question, warning law enforcement officials of a possible Al Qaeda plot to set wildfires in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, actually dates back to 2003. Based on information obtained interrogating an Al Qaeda detainee, the memo makes clear that the claim could not be verified.
Slim proof. Still, Fox News and many blogs did not hesitate to speculate as to whether there could be a connection. What could be a better wake-up call than seeing multi-million dollar homes burned to the ground by Islamic radicals? And during Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, no less.
I can relate. I admit that I’m what you might call a one-issue voter. I firmly believe that the West’s likely decades-long struggle against radical Islam is the defining challenge of our time. As for the best way to defeat this ruthless enemy, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be embarrassed to drive around with an “Appeasement Is Not The Answer” bumper sticker on my car. I think that most Americans wouldn’t sleep at night if they were present at just one of the national security briefings President Bush attends every morning.
The fact that my loved ones and I are as likely as anyone else to become the next victims drives my preoccupation with terror. After all, Los Angeles, where I live, was the destination of three of the 9/11 planes. LAX was one of the targets of the 2000 millennium attack plots. I’ve waited on trains at the Atocha station in Madrid, the site of the March 11 bombings, too many times to count. (A subsequent plot to bomb the high-speed train my wife and I always take to get to her family’s town is another reminder of the jihadist dream to reconquer Spain.) My sister, who lives in Great Britain and works right next to the Tiger Tiger Night Club terrorists tried to bomb earlier this year, was riding the tube in London on the morning of the July 7 attacks.
As I see it, the threat of terrorism isn’t nearly as distant as my friends and neighbors make it out to be.
Sure, I can be a bore at times trying to get this point across. Conversations with relatives in Spain too often turn to politics; my sister usually hangs up on me when I tell her to read Londonistan. It seems sometimes that, as firmly as I believe, others just as firmly reject.
Which brings me back to the fevered musings concerning the California fires. Liberal blogs immediately criticized Fox for digging up the memo. The Raw Story claimed that the network was “fanning the terror fears.” And then there was this on the Daily Kos:
Just like proverbial boogey man of Myth, Fox News sees Al Qaeda under every rock . . . . And now, Al Qaeda has allegedly set the California Wildfires which have displaced nearly 1 Million people – at least that’s what Fox “Newsman” Steve Doocy thinks.
Point taken. But what’s worse: Exaggerating a potential threat or downplaying it?
Recall the Beltway Sniper attacks of 2002. As the death toll kept climbing, some wondered if the country was witnessing an Islamic-motivated killing spree. Others criticized the notion as anti-Islamic. We now know that John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were, in fact, on a jihad when they killed 10 people. But, on CNN’s fifth anniversary special on the attacks, there was no mention that the killers were motivated by Islam.
Meanwhile, succumbing to the same desire for a national wake-up call, many liberals blame all they can on global warming. At the Daily Kos, we have this post: “Global Warming did, however, contribute to the conditions for these fires and, well, could be said to be fanning their flames.” Harry Reid, who last I checked wasn’t a Kossack, expressed a similar view.
Looking back at the blame game last week, maybe it’s safe to say that Americans can be divided into two groups based on how they answer one question. What’s the bigger threat: global warming, or terrorists’ resolve to spread Islam across the globe?
I guess everyone has their apocalyptic fear – and a secret hope that something, anything, will wake people up to the threat.
Aaron Hanscom is a Los Angeles-based editor for PJ Media; his own blog is Scribblings.
I can hardly believe the Daily Kos blamed those fires on global warming. There were fires before global warming, and there will still be when, a decade or two from now, the whole thing turns out to be silly.
ThirstyJon
freedomthirst.com
I hardly think we need to be adding to the “terrorist scare” that has already affected so much of the US….Is fear really the only way to cause awareness?
You raise an interesting point. If I had to choose between exaggerating and downplaying the threat I’m with you. Let’s bring as much attention to this as we can.
I agree that most Americans would probably be alarmed to attend a national security briefing, but I think that only illustrates a more general point: there are a lot of horrors in the world that most of us are only too happy to ignore. For example, would you sleep at night if you had to watch a prison rape every day?
We’ve discussed this endlessly in the past but I remain stuck on it: if I have a better chance of dying via car crash, shower slip ‘n fall, cancer, heart disease, etc., why should I focus only on terrorism? (and I say this upon pains of being called a spineless, Europe-loving, fascist appeaser in the comments)
As always, a thorough and insightful piece from Hanscom. He touches on many important themes in a very balanced way—unless you believe it’s a right wing bias to care about terrorism, which, as I have learned from my “one issue” friends whose one issue is global warming, is perhaps the case.
The beltway case, and every attempt by the western media to avoid condemning, much less mentioning bad things about Islamic murderers, is why the American/Euro left still does not understand the threat we face.
Islam and global warming are not the problems. The problem is we have the internet, too many news networks and simply too much media. Having too much media is not a problem when compapred to other countries that crush all voices except their own, but media saturation has created fierce competition amongst outlets and each journalist must go to great lengths to have his or her msg heard. I snicker when I see titles to news shows like “Planet in Peril,” on CNN. Or Fox with its constant terror level update (I think we are at Orange
) News like any other biz is out to make money and sell ads. If Anderson Cooper cant find someplace in the world that is in “peril,” someone else will. If Chris Hansen cant find another internet pervert, someone else will. Global warming and terrorism are nothing new. The only thing new the last 10 years is media saturation.
Southern California is a botanical region known as a Chaparral.
The botanical cycle of a Chaparral includes fire – some seeds of the plants that are part of a Chaparral forest will not germinate (begin to grow and make plants) until they reach temperatures exceeding 300 degrees – really.
The arson activity in Southern California may not be a terrorist attack from Al Qaeda, we, at MAXINE, choose to think that maybe it is the work of a “Pyro-Appleseed”!
Let The Chapparral Grow!
(now all we need is is some really heavy, drought killing, mudslide making cloud bursts)
… now THAT is terrorism.
Charlie – the difference is that those dangers are non-increasing. If we fail to place mats in our showers, the same number of people will die tomorrow from slipping in the shower as died today. But, if we fail to confront our enemies, their movement will metastasize and their lethality will rapidly increase.
While I won’t believe that al Qaeda/local jihadists are involved in the fires until there is proof, I doubt that the government would tell us if they were unless al Qaeda took credit for it first. Having a vivid imagination from my military service and later operating in a major construction environment, I, as well as my associates, can imagine scenarios that would frighten the ordinary citizen. Our open and free society has little protection from those setting forest fires or worse; especially if the perpetrators do not have a survival criterion in their plans. I am amazed that we have gone so long without a major attack on our country. We owe a great deal of thanks to our police, FBI and Homeland Security; thanks they rarely receive.
Amen, Charlie. Looks like Aaron’s a bit paranoid. Yes, bad guys are out there in the real world and they will harm you if they can. However, they are few and we are many. Who is downplaying the fires???? They are real. They have arrested a couple of suspects but I’ve haven’t heard they were al-queda operatives. There’s bringing attention to something and there’s spreading rumors and FUD.
I never read Daily Kos, on principle, but I am well aware of it by virtue of those like you who quote from it. In the following quote: “Just like proverbial boogey man of Myth, Fox News sees Al Qaeda under every rock …” it is amusing to note that there was nothing proverbial (the writer used the wrong word – - he probably meant mythical – - but there is also nothing mythical) about boogey men. Among several possible etymological and cultural sources of this word, the one that links it to the depredations of the Bugis, notable pirates of the waters off Indonesia and Borneo, is fairly convincing. So if Al Qaeda is as mythical as the Bugis were (actually, to some degree, ARE, since they still operate) then Al Qaeda is concrete and actual. I concede that Steve Doocy may still not be the most brilliant journalist on the planet, however.
“Looks like Aaron’s a bit paranoid”
At least he’s not suggesting that Blackwater is behind it…
Charlie, in early 1942, Americans had a much better chance of dying via car crash, shower slip ‘n fall, cancer, heart disease, etc. than at the hands of the German, Japanese, and Italians.
Wait! Stop the press! Fox News is exageraging something? When has that ever happened? I’m sorry, but this is nothing new.
Check out this blog.
If Al Queda was responsible they would have taken credit long ago. Actually it’s amazing they haven’t tried to take credit anyway, it really shows how down in the dumps they are right now.
Good reminder of the Sniper case. They were clearly on a jihad.
1. It is evident to me why President Bush said in 2001 that this (misnamed) Global War on Terror would be the longest, most difficult conflict the USA has ever faced, unlike any other war in our history.
2. The enemy we face is as dangerous as the weapons it can acquire and deploy.
3. There are extrememly dangerous weapons potentially available to the enemy.
US citizens and others living in the USA should contemplate these three points seriously. This is not about politics, at least for those of us not politicians. We should also remember that this type of asymetric warfare is often more psychologically dangerous than physically dangerous. Unfortunately it can be very dangerous on all levels given point number 3 above.
comtemplate these three points
This one should be self-explanatory. It was all Bush’s fault.
Details.
Sorry. Bad link there.
Here’s another try.
Arrrrgh. Something is inserting a word space after the period in the URL above. Some kind of spellchecking, I assume.
What about this one?
Nope. Just won’t work. Works in preview, but not in post.
One word: copycat.
The copycat, or ‘contagion effect’ is a critical component of both arson and US-based islamic terrorist crimes. You need to look at the guidelines for reporting suicides and translate them to avoid your media reports functioning as a terrorist force multiplier.
Sensationalism delivers rewards for these crimes. Some news reports act as instruction manuals. And choice of framing, word choice, can increase or reduce the effect.
‘Charlie, in early 1942, Americans had a much better chance of dying via car crash, shower slip ‘n fall, cancer, heart disease, etc. than at the hands of the German, Japanese, and Italians.’
As was the case in 1943, 1944, and 1945.
But somehow, talking about mortality rates and causes probably strays a bit too close to empirical reality for many posters here to accept.
Now of course, if 10% of your population dies or is wounded at the hands of Americans, Russians, British, and your own governement, etc., you might develop the idea that war, especially war fought for ideological and resource grabbing reasons, is not only criminal, as established in a massive tribunal after that war has been lost, but stupid.
You might even draw the conclusion that war is the worst alternative, and instead start to follow the example of a society which was founded on the idea of liberty, law, and which studiously avoided the evils of such things as a standing military or the use of torture.
And maybe, a generation or two down the road, you would realize that this was the right choice, and you would sadly wonder what had gone wrong in the society which had seemed to offer a better model of how to exist, even with its flaws.
Worse, you might wonder, after what had been done by your parents and grandparents, you are now being faulted for not participating in a war of occupation in a country which has little in the way of love for it occupiers, but lots and lots of oil.
Nonetheless, regardless of the screaming nightmares which seem to infect the minds of those who have little experience of what war really means, it seems as if a nation with true experience of war on a scale which makes islamo-whatever seem like a joke refuses to compromise it principles.
Sad to see that the U.S. has thrown away centuries of its principles because some people think their nightmares are real. Worse, by using torture, the nightmares are increasingly based on the fantasies of the tortured, who simply scream out whatever it takes to stop the torture.
Critics who object to what they call the politics of fear are used to viewing the population as helpless victims who can only collapse into quivering paroxyms of fear. Rational actors asses and evaluate information, instead.