Man tries to put out fire by repeatedly driving over it with van full of guns and inadvertently creates perfect analogy for western foreign policy

This news comes to us from Clay County, Missouri, where a sheriff's deputy followed up the sound of gunfire and a thick pall of smoke to find a van burning in the middle of a field.

The van's owner was watching on from the side, having been burning rubbish in the field. When the fire got out of hand, he decided the best course of action was then to repeatedly drive over it in his van, which then caught on fire itself.

As well as a full tank of petrol, the van was also full of guns and ammunition, which caught on fire as well.

Through his actions he created a quite apt metaphor, as originally pointed out by Mark MacKinnon, a journalist for the Globe and Mail.

Others realised it could so easily be applied to the war on drugs.

Or perhaps almost anything dreamt up by western foreign policy makers in the last 50 years.

Professional firefighters later arrived to extinguish the blaze and the van's owner faced no further action, further completing the analogy.

HT The Kansas City Star and Mark MacKinnon

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