The Firefighter Analogy
From Michael of Boeing in our comments section:Oddly enough, your local Fire Department does not know which house will burn, on a given day, or for what specific reason. Yet, they work day and night, removing hazards, and citing overcrowded or otherwise unsafe conditions. They are active in the community, educating citizens on fire prevention, fire survival, and training themselves on fire fighting. When a fire does occur, they respond rapidly and forcefully. All in the absence of actionable intelligence.Michael, I appreciate your position. And I think I can clear this up a bit. This firefighter analogy is the perfect vehicle, but we need to enhance your imagery just a bit.
Let's assume for this exercise that the fire on a given day is the deliberate act of an arsonist. Also, there is a team of investigators from the police and fire departments have been investigating a rash of arson fires in the surrounding communities for years. The mayor, in his infinite wisdom, signed off on a law prohibiting the fire department and the police department from sharing information.
The police department has some leads and continue to work them but don't have anything solid about who the arsonist is or where/when the arsonist will strike next. The fire department investigators have determined that the arsonist was taught how to build a fire while camping in your city.
Now the day comes when the arsonist strikes. Both the police and fire departments respond to the emergency. Someone called 911 and informed them of the location of a fire. (I suppose the fire fighter patrol that the mayor enacted could have seen the smoke and responded to the fire that way, as well.)
The problem with this analogy, Michael, is that the fire department does have actionable intelligence: someone called them after the fire started. If the purpose of the fire department is to prevent the fire in the first place, the fire department failed. Why? They didn't have the actionable intelligence to be able to do so.
If liberals in this country think Amerikkka is so tough to live under now, just think if John A$hcroft and BushitlerCo had to tighten security to prevent that fire.
I don't think this is too difficult to understand. One could make the same argument about Clinton's handling of the USS Cole Incident. Why didn't Clinton prevent the bombing of the Cole? He didn't know it was going to happen. I don't blame Clinton for the bombing. I blame al Qaeda for that.
Al Qaeda is responsible for 9/11. And if we never want to bear witness to another event like it, we are going to have to engage the greater enemy: terrorism in all its forms and those who support such actions in the first place.
We are at war. Vigilence alone will not keep us safe. We need to have information in order to act. Actions which have no purpose will not keep us safe. Should we take precautionary measures that would promote safety? Yes, but are we really safe?
My goal here isn't to promote FEAR(tm), but rather to point out that safety is merely an illusion. The reality of modern times is that if a terrorist is determined to kill us, they can succeed.
So, what do we do about it?
Well, we could issue orders to all our citizens abroad to return home and seal our borders. We could try to give the terrorists whatever it is they want, but that would be fruitless; they want us dead. We could crawl up into the fetal position and cry like a baby.
Or we can take the fight to the enemy.
We're venturing a bit off the path of the original intent of the posting, but I think it is important to see the big picture every now and then.
However, let's not forget the important lesson to be learned here: the firefighter can't fight the fire if he doesn't know where the fire is.
