The Inevitable War on Terrorism

As we start the 21st century the US has picked up a new "War on..." This War just like the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty are wars that can never be won, while at the same time they are causes that cannot be ignored.

First I would like to point out what should be rational and obvious to all, but most world media overlooks: Terrorist attacks on the US are a rational form of attack given the enormous lead that the US has in military and economic power.

Note: to be clear I am neither apologizing nor endorsing terrorist attacks on the US — that should be taken as a given, obvious fact. What I am saying is that if you were a group with a murderous grudge against the US you wouldn't send your ambassador to the White House and declare war and take your vintage T55 class tanks and meet Mr. Abrams out on the battlefield fair and square. There is no conventional warfare that any state on this planet would hope to achieve parity with the US let alone win.

So if you cannot win with conventional weapons you would have to resort to terrorism and WMD and/or both.

It is responsible to note a few facts on terrorism and WMD: Japan was the first country to practice modern city-killing with the systematic destruction of Shanghai in the 1930s, the US of course killed hundreds of thousands in Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And North Korea's Pyongyang has the distinction of being the most destroyed modern city with over 2M deaths and over 98% of the surface area of the city obliterated. All of these US actions I support, although with a heavy, heavy heart. This is the most serious of warfare — the direct killing of the opposition's civilian population as the most efficient means to achieve your goals.

The US economy at $10T is 5 times larger than Japan's and it takes all of Europe, UK, Eastern Europe, Russia and the Ukraine to match the US' GDP.

We also enjoy the lion's share of the world's foreign investment (although it has just started to cool) and we have a military arsenal that makes a land war in Los Angeles or New York unthinkable in our lifetimes.

And finally any day of the week in a deeply foul mood, we possess a nuclear arsenal that truly allows us to take the ball home and not play nice with anyone any more.

So thinking about that it is sobering to think that why would anyone attack us in a straight-up conventional war? If China wants to get something off its chest, why wouldn't it fund an NSO at arm's length and later claim ignorance?

More to my point, why if we were attacked by Saudi Arabia with Saudi money, by Saudi men with some portion of the Saudi government (read royal family) oversight — why then has our Administration given the Saudis the big fat pass and nailed 9-11 to Iraq instead?

My belief is there was some serious backdoor discussions involving blood and oil and that we must have a current understanding that Saudi won't do this again.

But I put this to you to think about: al-Qa'ida's main goal is to try to goad the US into bombing Mecca and tangling the US into a deep and messy war with all of Islam. How can the US avoid this trap? I don't see how.

I think 9-11 v2.0 will happen at the same scale or larger and I think it is 5 years on the outside. I think Americans will demand a very serious payment of revenge blood, I do not think the sitting US President will be able to resist the pressure to respond in a non-linear level of revenge. While that would of course satisfy the football fan in me, it causes me deep worry about the future.

That revenge will of course be successful in terms of a military operation, but instead of making the world a safer place for Americans I think it will instead be squeezing the wet bar of soap even harder and force us to try to rule the world — and fail.

-Erik