Konrad Switters
June 26, 2002

The long term impact of the fires burning in the southwestern United States is incalculable; in that it is not possible to calculate the trivial impact of such a relatively benign event. Although the press seems to like the idea that this story should smolder energetically in the imagination of the American public, it seems almost absurd that such an event should ignite the sensitivities of a country bent on eliminating a much more dangerous and insidious threat than a forest fire.

The front page of the Sunday New York Times offered the American public [the part of it that reads] a refrain from pondering the vast, perpetual, and arguably impossible task of eliminating terrorism, to highlight a natural disaster in Arizona. Perhaps it is the idea that an event such as a forest fire is bound and limited, which gives such tangible meaning to the struggle which is currently ensuing against this wildfire. The fire will be beaten, that is to be sure; terrorism on the other hand, will smolder for years and years to come. The source of a forest fire, and the cause can be determined meticulously; and yet the threat and circumstance of forest fires can never be eliminated completely. The same could be said of terrorism, except that the inevitability of its continued existence has not lead to a desire to more thoroughly understand the circumstances which give rise to such desperate behavior; eliminating the existing terror groups will not eliminate the flash fires of hatred which give rise to them.

That a natural disaster can be so thoroughly understood, investigated, and resolved, but the roots of an unnatural and premeditated disaster such as terrorism cannot, reveals some ugly truths about American culture specifically, and humanity in general. The inability of political leaders around the world to do anything other than see the spread of terrorism as an unmitigated act of evil aggression against "democracy," is as moribund a thought as seeing a forest fire as nothing more than a source of smoke. In a forest fire, the spread of the fire is known to be correlated exactly with the availability of combustible material and the direction of the wind. The oversimplification of the terrorist agenda and the near incalculability of their acts will make terrorism as impossible to eradicate as a fire, without water. Political leaders need to find out what's burning and where it came from if they ever hope to put out the fires that will be set intentionally in The United States by militant extremists in the months and years to come.