Gasoline on the Fire

What follows is a guest post, written by my 17 year old son, Max. He showed it to me after posting it on his Facebook page, and I thought that it could use a wider audience. See for yourself...

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Hello,

So I don't mean to sound complainy, or come off sounding like some pinko-hippie, but can we take a moment, drop all the terror crap, and step back?

okay.

cool.

So we've got this kinda unstable region, the Middle East. Some crazy stuff has gone on there, mainly because since like the beginning of time Western nations have been imposing philosophies, governments, and weapons on these poor people who can't seem to get a word in edgewise.

If you take another step back you can begin to understand where these anti-Western governments like Iran's come from. They're pissed that we're so up in their faces about everything.

If I were living there, the notion of overcaffinated, godless, white people invading my homeland to "bring democracy" would freak me out too... but whatever, we're America, so we always know what we're doing. (Except in Hawaii [1893], Cuba [1961], and Vietnam [1963], and Iran [1979], to name a few)

So we've got this hotbed of angry people, one which we stirred up most recently with this second gulf war of ours.

Unfortunately, just as Malcolm X refused to blatantly accept the white American point of view, some don't completely agree with D.C.'s idea of an Iraqi democracy. And they might be right.

For convenience's sake, let's call these people "insurgents" or, perhaps, "evildoers". They usually can be identified by their AK-47's.

Wait, wait, AK-47's? Those are Russian guns, aren't they? Yes, I believe they are. I believe they were the pride and joy of the Soviet Union, the gun that symbolized all that was great about that winter of 1917.

So why do these evildoers have these weapons? OK, I'll stop being coy. This is why they have those weapons:

In the 1980's the Russians had their own little Vietnam in Afghanistan. They armed the locals themselves and we, being a nation of intelligent, freeloading, individuals, armed the other side. In fact, the man we armed, who you may have heard of, ended up making us regret that whole "giving away guns" thing.

His name was Osama Bin Laden.

We've handed out weapons before, on more than one occasion, to neutralize other weapons.

You don't put out a fire by dousing it in gasoline.

Which brings me to the point of this tirade,

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2137051,00.html

Glance at the above, then come back.

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Great to have you back, let's chat about that little article you just read.

Iran is scary, I'm totally with you there. I'm not into the "arming people who want to nuke the crap out of us" thing either, seriously.

But this is so, so, so, so, the wrong way to be going about this.

Pumping ammunition into unstable nations is doing nothing short of raising the stakes in a game with no rules.

We need to rethink this action immediately, and, as long as we're listening to me, we need to sit down with Iran in an international forum and really really talk.

We're a world of free-thinking human beings. There is no red menace, there are no "body snatchers" there is no "invisible hand", we all have the choice to detonate weapons or disarm them. If the Iranians can't be argued with, and wish to annihilate our society, actions must be taken, but not a moment before.

Pre-emptive strikes may leave us the absolute winners, but at what cost?