The first and second morals of the fable

[Uncle Joe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf

The fable

The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock. When one actually does appear and the boy again calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm and the sheep are eaten by the wolf.[2]

The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, "this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them". It echoes a statement attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laërtius in his The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, where the sage was asked what those who tell lies gain by it and he answered "that when they speak truth they are not believed".[3] William Caxton similarly closes his version with the remark that "men bileve not lyghtly hym whiche is knowen for a lyer".[4]

(snip)

Teachers have used the fable as a cautionary tale about telling the truth but a recent educational experiment suggested that reading "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" increased children’s likelihood of lying. On the other hand, reading a book on George Washington and the cherry tree decreased this likelihood dramatically.[5] The suggestibility and favourable outcome of the behaviour described, therefore, seems the key to moral instruction of the young. However, when dealing with the moral behaviour of adults, Samuel Croxall asks, referencing political alarmism, "when we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against real ones?"[6]

The first moral, Liars aren't believed even when the threat is real and this could even happen on a national level.

The second unstated moral, sometimes the threat is real.

Without a doubt the U.S. government under Cheney/Bush lied about the danger (s) posed by Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

Has their false cries now "stale and threadbare" magnified cynicism creating blind spots regarding our ability to guard against potential threats to the U.S. our critical interests or a vital region of the world?

I believe ISIL, ISIS is indeed a wolf and while it isn't really capable of waging major war directly against us, if unchecked it does have the ability to greatly escalate war throughout the Middle East sucking many nations one by one into a destructive conflagration as happened during the run up to The "Great" War now known as World War I in 1914.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

World War I (WWI or WW1 or World War One), also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. More than 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war, a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and tactical stalemate. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, paving the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved.[5]

The war drew in all the world's economic great powers,[6] which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and the Russian Empire) and the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Although Italy had also been a member of the Triple Alliance alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary, it did not join the Central Powers, as Austria-Hungary had taken the offensive against the terms of the alliance.[7] These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war: Italy, Japan and the United States joined the Allies, and the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria the Central Powers. Ultimately, more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history.[8][9]

(snip)

"Power abhors a vacuum," should the U.S. pull out while the region is unstable, more and more nations will be compelled to join into the fray to protect their own interests, this being a critical region of the world in regards to oil will make that virtually inevitable.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

1. Those aren't the only morals.

[Uncle Joe]

2. That was funny.

Thanks for the laugh, Donald Ian Rankin.