Bushfires

The Oxford Dictionary defines bush as “wild uncultivated land, especially in Africa and Australia.” Two places where bushfires are common. Unfortunately, they are also common in the Middle East, Far East and the rest of Asia where the Bush Doctrine is burning itself indelibly into the minds of future modern-day arsonists – terrorists. The only difference is that these bushfires are started because of Bush and oil. Not the traditional dry brush and high winds. Granted, there are a lot of high-winded career politicians and their bureaucrats stoking the fires to make sure they keep burning.

America’s political bushfire doctrine is nothing new. It is just finally being openly admitted to because America is the world’s sole arrogant superpower and unrestrained arsonist with the most incendiary firepower ever known to humanity. The problem is the firepower is creating bushfires our firefighter children have to put out. As a father of a former U.S. firefighter, I’m not convinced it is a good idea. Especially if the fires are biological or nuclear.

Bushfires and the empire-building firefights they create are nothing new in American history. The Mexican, Spanish and other firefights in America’s young history were an earth-scorching foundation for today’s bushfires.

My personal favorite is the one America set in Hawaii, America’s recreational playground and Missile Defense Shield frontiers. In 1873, Gen. John Schofield visited Hawaii as a tourist and while there identified Pearl Harbor as “the key to the Central Pacific Ocean.” Thus, Hawaii was invaded by thin-lipped, morally oppressive Calvinist missionaries who kicked out the queen of the indigenous population, decimated the people with disease and consigned the population to virtual slavery on sugar plantations. Hawaiians were caught up in the U.S. 19th century bushfire of empire-building that made them “American citizens by force, not by choice.”

The Hawaiin Kingdom, known by some as the Hawaiinas Hawaii, being rebuilt by “Bumpy” Kanahele, is a place where “Haole, go home!” and variations of whites-aren’t welcome are shouted from the front porches. Locals rule there – a government of Hawaiians for Hawaiians. It is a place where Hawaiian is taught as a first language in some schools and spoken among neighbors. People openly accuse America of stealing Hawaii and believe that someday their lands will return to the Kanaka Maoli, the ancient Polynesians who settled the islands.

Noam Chomsky, a renowned professor of linguistics at MIT, and author of books ranging from mathematics to politics, wrote that the bushfires in the Middle East were first started when FDR and the House of Saud signed their treaty on a U.S. aircraft carrier. “The State Department recognized in 1945 that the Middle East was the main energy resource of the world and that Saudi Arabia alone was a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history,” wrote Chomsky. “They immediately moved to kick out France and to reduce Britain to a kind of junior partner. Controlling Middle East energy reserves has been a centerpiece of U.S. policy since the 1940’s.”

America has won significant military advantage by starting bushfires to further its economic and political gains. Following the bushfires of Iraq in 1991, the U.S. had military bases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The bushfires of Serbia eight years later netted bases throughout Europe and the Balkan region, most notably in Hungary, Macedonia, Kosovo and Bulgaria. From the bushfire in Afghanistan came military installations in 10 locations, including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan.

The first millennium bushfire in Afghanistan was a rehearsal to the second one started in Iraq. Hopefully, it won’t burn out of control as bushfires are known to do.