On July 9, 2013, I received from a friend an emailed video entitled “Fire Wars,” published almost a year earlier, on August 13, 2012, by the American Center for Democracy (ACD). It was a presentation made by William B. Scott, a Fellow at ACD’s Capitol Hill briefing on the Threat of Economic Warfare Against the United States.

Scott is a former National Security Agency official and Aviation Week editor, and the coauthor of Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III, and the author of the book The Permit. His video presentation Fire Wars was very credible. The main thrust of the  presentation was a detailed discussion of how terrorists use fire as a “weapon of war.”

Scott introduced his subject by saying: “Perhaps the most simple form of economic warfare is wild land arson – setting fires in U.S. forests and grasslands.” He noted, “For terrorists that are determined to inflict significant damage with very little investment or risk, fire is an extremely high-leverage weapon of mass effect.”

When the Navy SEALs invaded Osama bin Laden’s compound and killed him, Scott claimed “…they captured a treasure trove of material that provided unprecedented insight into Al Qaeda’s plans. One was a detailed campaign for starting fires throughout the West. U.S. Officials have determined that some fires in California last year (in 2011) were ignited by Al Qaeda operatives. On May

2^nd, ABC News ran a story entitled, ‘Al Qaeda Magazine Calls for Firebomb Campaign in U.S.’ Issues of Inspire magazine surfaced on Al Qaeda websites, calling for jihadists to start huge fires with timed explosives planted in U.S. forests. The articles included detailed instructions for constructing remote-controlled ‘ember bombs.’”

Scott gave ample evidence in my mind to suggest that there are indeed “Al Qaeda operatives” in this country who may be responsible for many of the wild fires that have been started here, in the United States, but, you be the judge. You can access the website Fire Wars by going to  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFHM0rd9cX8

Ten years ago, in 2002, Scott mentioned that the “Blue Ribbon Panel” warned of the dangers of terrorism in situations like Colorado, that have “Extremely dry conditions, exacerbated by forests choked with downed timber and standing beetle-killed trees, that create ideal targets for terrorists waging economic warfare. There’s reason to believe America is under attack, and that the bad guys are waging Fire Wars right now.”

The question that immediately comes to my mind is this: Assuming the “Blue Ribbon Panel” submitted the above mentioned report to the proper authorities, and if the government didn’t act upon any of the recommendations they made, if not, why not!?  

Even though I feel what Scott has presented in his Fire War video represents a serious threat to our national welfare and safety, for whatever reason, the media and our government have ignored the danger; possibly there hasn’t been enough palpable evidence that the terrorists are setting the fires, even though more than ten years have elapsed since Scott’s mention of the “Blue Ribbon Panel,” which warned of the existence of terrorism in our country.

Perhaps we need the terrorists to build a fire under the members of the press, as well as under some key government officials, to get them to act and recognize the threat for what it very well may be! There’s a need in this case for the press as well as our government to become more proactive rather than reactive – instead of continually to always report the news after it takes place (reactive) rather than before (proactive) the news occurs! The reason that’s important is because then people in general and the government in particular can then plan accordingly, all done in preparation of similar terrorist activities occurring again.

Based on what I’ve just discussed, it’s no wonder that Scott concludes: “we as a people, aren’t fighting back.”

I chose to give this partial account of what was contained in Scott’s excellent  Fire Wars video presentation to illustrate the seriousness of the problem, as well as how pervasive this pattern of destruction of this kind of terrorist activities can wreak on communities, as well as on our natural resources across the country.