Posted on 12/18/2001 9:25:52 AM PST by Pay now bill Clinton
A Foreign-Policy Primer for Children: The Fable of the Hornets
by Jacob G. Hornberger, December 2001
Once upon a time in a faraway land there was a happy and prosperous village filled with industrious and fun-loving people. To protect the villagers from occasional thieves and marauders, the village council had hired a policeman named Oscar.
One day Oscar got bored and took a long walk into the woods, where he discovered some of the biggest hornets’ nests he had ever seen. The next day and every day thereafter, Oscar returned to the nests and took to poking at them with a big stick. That angered the hornets and caused them to attack Oscar, but their stingers could not penetrate the brand new suit of armor that he was now wearing.
A few days later, however, a terrible thing happened. Several hornets flew into the village and stung some of the villagers, who were understandably outraged. The village council immediately called an emergency meeting. "The hornets have attacked us," one man cried. "We must destroy them all!" After several hours of discussion, everyone agreed that the village had no choice but to wage war on the hornets.
At that point, however, a young boy arose and said, "Maybe if Oscar stops poking the hornets’ nests, the hornets will no longer attack the village."
A gasp and a hush immediately swept across the room. Suddenly, one man screamed, "The boy is supporting the hornets!" Another yelled, "He’s saying that they were justified in attacking the village." A woman weighed in: "He’s suggesting that we got what we deserved!" "Unpatriotic!" "Treason!"
The boy slunk down into his seat and did not say another word, and the villagers turned their attention back to the upcoming war on hornets.
The next day, Oscar and several big deputies, all fully suited in brand new suits of armor, headed into the woods. With several big sticks, they began hitting and beating the big hornets’ nests. The hornets were furious, and immediately attacked Oscar and his men, but to no avail because their stingers could not penetrate the brand new suits of armor. After several hours, all the hornets’ nests had come crashing down.
When the news reached the village, everyone roared his approval and began celebrating. All of a sudden, however, hundreds of hornets swarmed around the villagers and went on the attack. Later, when Oscar returned to the woods, he noticed something foreboding -- dozens of new, smaller hornets’ nests were now under construction throughout the woods.
Under siege, the village council enacted the Anti-Hornet Patriot Act, which established the new Anti-Hornet Security Police, whose job it was to peer into everyone’s windows day and night for the purpose of searching for hornets. When one villager expressed misgivings, the village council responded, "If you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t care."
One year later, the village council called a meeting to give a report on the war on the hornets. Everyone wore a suit of armor, which had become normal attire. The council advised the villagers that the war was not going well: that it seems that each dead hornet had been replaced by five new ones, which continued attacking the village.
At that point, the young boy again arose and said, "Maybe if Oscar stops poking the hornets’ nests, the hornets will no longer attack the village." A gasp and a hush again swept across the room. But this time, one man said, "Maybe the boy’s got a point!" Another joined in: "Yes, what do we have to lose?"
Oscar exclaimed, "If we stop poking the hornets’ nests, hornets everywhere will think we’re weak. Anyway, they hate us so much by now that they’ll attack the village anyway. We’ve got to continue waging the war on the hornets until we kill them all."
But under pressure from the villagers, the village council voted to end the war on the hornets and ordered Oscar to stop poking their nests and to limit himself to protecting the village from thieves and marauders.
After a time, a remarkable thing happened: the hornets stopped attacking the village, and they never again returned. And so it was that the village in that faraway land once again became happy and prosperous, filled with industrious and fun-loving people who lived happily ever after.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va.
The author doesn't even get ethology right.
What is your purpose is posting this nonsense?
The villagers' mistake was to destroy the nests, without killing the hornets. Something tells me Rummy has figured this out, and we kill the "hornets" in the "nest". You can't multiply when you're extinct.
Sigh. If only fairy tales came true...
I'm an example of a person who learned from my mistakes. But then, I was never stupid enough that I wrote fables about cockroachs.
1) Everything is always our fault.
2) Never fight back, it just makes things worse.
3) Listen to the children, and follow their lead.
This is excellent stuff - I don't think I could have possibly articulated what's wrong with the antiwar left any better than this. He's managed to combine the best of misplaced forgiveness, self-hatred, and cowardly, childlike thinking into a single post.
I suppose if the Klan ever shows up again, he'd advise all his black friends to be careful not to stir 'em up too much...
I get bored with lib/commie jerks who spout this crap that if only 'we' were nice & paid attention to the very nice, but misunderstood maniac-arabs - who are blowing everything up in sight in the mideast - that they will be nice in return.
Then I thought: Maybe the hornets are normal Americans. The people with the stick are Osama types.
(of course, a typical liberal would not be able to think clearly enough for this interpretation to be what was intended... )
As compared to Soviet folly, I think we did ok.
I know I'm going to regret wading into this one, but here goes...
Look, I'm starting with the assumption that you are a good guy and you're not just trying to be provocative. In that light, I'd ask you to reconsider what you've written here from a more fair and balanced point of view.
The troops we have stationed in Saudi Arabia are there because they have been invited. They were invited, orignally, because a rabid state declared war on a neighbor without any provocation whatsoever. We did every Arab nation in the region a big favor when we put our troops into harm's way to straighten that mess out. Sure, we had our own reasons for it and it's not like we were just being charitable, but they did cheer when we drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and they looked pretty damn happy to me.
The troops remain because they have been asked to remain. We do not even fly aircraft over these countires without permission, and we would certainly not leave troops stationed in Saudi Arabia if they were not welcome there.
If you still believe we are keeping food and medicine out of Iraq you need to brush up on your current events. If you consider the damage to the Iraq to be our fault, I can only ask that you also assess the blame that their leader should shoulder for his actions.
Sure, the US did do lots of things over the years to piss people off in that region, but again, let's try to be fair here - what foreign power with strategic interests in the region was ever more humane, or more fair, than we were? The British and French? the Soviets? The Chinese?
And don't we get a little credit for helping to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, for the many millions in aid we have invested over the years, for our tireless and thankless work on the mideast peace process, or for the 240 marines who died in the effort? Did we react with disproportionate force when the Cole was attacked, or the Khobar Towers bombed? Did we show too little restraint at the end of the Gulf War by letting Saddam live and leaving many thosands of his troops alive as well?
Alow me to be blunt for a moment. Iraq is one of the ugliest, most screwed up, evil countries in exisitance, and yet you seem to suggest that we are somehow as bad, if not worse. That's just utter nonsence. Saddam has killed, tortured, impoverished, and subjugated more Arabs in the last decade that we have in our entire history.
I honestly don't think the Gulf War has left us with anything to apologise for. Can you imagine what the region would be like now if we hadn't stepped in?
If that counts as 'poking a hornet's nest' than my sympathy for the hornets has grown mighty thin. What's next, sympathy for the Nazis because they didn't have the elbow room they really wanted?
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