The Future of War in the Developed World

If elites continue on their path of unaccountability, their insistence on destroying the future, and their crushing of prosperity, this is what will happen.

True dat. I take little comfort from your “If,” but I’m grateful that it is there.

What bribe did the US pay to leave Iraq?

I don’t think Americans will ever revolt, or at least in our lifetime, for the same reason most Americans think they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, as Steinbeck would put it.

@alyosha, what a great comment and provocative observations.

I tend to think that this collapse of space, as you put it, will not survive resource depletion, as much of this technology is dependant on the leisure time that cheap energy has given us (because of the specialization of knowledge that must be supported to keep those silicon chips and airplanes.) I could be wrong about this, but if I’m not, my question is how much of the philosophical gain from successfully wrestling with these issues you’ve discussed will remain with us after a generation or two without them (also, assuming that we do successfully come to terms with them in the first place.)

Thoughts?

(Ah, I see that Ian foreshadowed this a bit while I was typing it up.)

Looks like this is our day to butt heads, @Celsius233 – cause I’m a gonna have to disagree – to a point.

I’ll have to say that this is probably true for most social media users – though I may be being unkind in saying/thinking that. Certainly anyone (and this seems to be most people) that has thousands or even hundreds of “friends” are probably not experiencing much depth, but I seem to have stabilized at 87 (Facebook) – because I’m pretty contemptuous about the normal twaddle of cat photos and bacon serenades, pos-mo posters and techno-fantasists, etc. (I mostly stick to politics & sociology & feeding my blog posts, and people self-sort away from me if they want to be silly.) And of course 87 makes it mostly acquaintances, not really “friends.”

But just last night a geographically-estranged friend of mine with whom I maintain a healthy contact with because of the evil FB flew in from Colorado and picked me up and treated me to a night out. The ease with which this occurred was directly enabled by the continuity that FB provided. She’s here for the weekend, and I’m going to a spring training game with her tomorrow. That’s collapsed space for you. 🙂

It’s all in how you use it.

Ian,

Regarding surveillance, what do you think of David Brin’s thoughts
on this in that he believes that rather than eliminate the surveillance by the government, instead have it so that it works both ways so that ordinary people can have it to watch the government ?

You refer to “the left” a couple of times here. Who specifically are you referencing? I’m not disagreeing I’d just like to know who they are. Thank you.

@ alyosha:
Of some interest to me is how economies have become integrated (for better and for worse) – how resilience is disappearing/has disappeared from our economic system, as space is collapsing. A crash in one area, could at one time be isolated from everywhere else. Not so much today.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is currently on top of my interest list as well. I read a system engineer’s report on global chain disruption here before and it is not pretty. With pervasive Just In Time models used by logistics company, a small disruption in critical area/connected nodes can cause a breakdown in the system.

As far as I know, system engineering concepts are one of the best methodologies for analysis on complex systems.

Personally, I think the collapsing space itself is not a sustainable trend. It is collapsed with the help of an unprecedented usage of energy (i.e. oil, natural gas) in human history. What will happen when energy is no longer cheap or freely available?

I read another essay before on the lack of “balance” concepts in Western philosophy. In Eastern philosophy, Confucianism is the seed for Taoism. The concept of Yin and Yang helps to sensitize the ancient Chinese to the dualistic nature of many elements in the world. They strive for The Path of the Middle so as to not disturb the balance. This conservatism help to moderate the excesses in the society and build a more resilient society.

The Western world’s obsession with efficiency left them blind-sided by unintended consequences. Especially now when efficiency is so defined narrowly as producing and profiting more. This efficiency mantra has invaded agriculture, medicine and many other sectors in the world. I think many “alternatives” thoughts for these disciplines such as organic farming and homoeopathy provide the counter-balance to this singular attention to efficiency.

@Ronny and others – you’re absolutely right that “collapsing space” is dependent on energy. In fact, it’s a direct result, an effect, of the harnessing of energy, which began in a big way with the invention of the steam engine. “Collapsing of space” is just one effect of our recent ability to harness energy. By recent, I mean over the last one or two hundred years.

It’s my opinion that this harnessing of energy is going to continue, despite the significant disruptions coming soon with the end of cheap fossil fuels. I believe that one way or another, humankind is eventually going to solve the energy problem, but it may take decades or even a century to develop something that resembles the fueled-by-cheap-energy, centralized industrial architecture we now live under. Or this could be several centuries into the future, if at all, depending upon how much calamity/destruction lies ahead. I don’t need to tell anyone reading this blog, that the truly sad thing is that America had several choice points since its own peak oil occurred in the 1970s, where we could have gone all out and gotten to work on solving this problem, while fossil fuel was cheap, but we all know what happened.

By contrast, renewable forms of energy are available now, but they work mostly in a decentralized fashion – again favoring the direction of technology that empowers individuals or small groups, and not large organizations or states. A different kind of society is going to rise up because of this, growing amidst the rubble of the failed centralized state.

@Celcius wrote: I absolutely disagree. I don’t use any of the Facebook/Twitter “stuff”.
I rather see these as giving a sense of collapsed space between individuals; but actually creating huge, shallow chasms of the illusion of connectedness.
It’s destroying intimate human connections, IMO.

I don’t use any of that stuff either (for a variety of reasons). But consider – you and I are exchanging ideas on this blog, which is a kind of virtual salon. Without this particular bit of cyberspace, it’s highly unlikely that we would ever meet or connect, in any fashion. I’ve often envied the various physical salons that occurred among the intelligentsia of decades past – rare and exclusive gatherings that I have only read about or have seen recreated in movies. Now, anyone can host a salon, of sorts, and the participants can be from anywhere.

It’s my belief that “telepresence” – the ability to present yourself to others and connect with them via the internet is only in its infancy. This blog is a very primitive, text only, not-real-time form of it. Webinars (or skype-like picture phoning) involving two way real time communication, sometimes with live video and audio between all participants is just getting underway. This technology is going to advance to the point where it will be almost like being with someone physically. With each advance, the bandwidth and amount of information conveyed (from delayed text, to real time text, to real time video and audio) grows, to the point where it comes close to actually being there. But of course, it will never be the same as being there physically.

And so I’d say that Facebook, this blog, and so on, do collapse space and bring people together who would in all likelihood never meet. Of course the connection is shallow, and will never be the same as being together in person. But whether this is “destroying human connections” has more to do with how its used. There will be those for whom the internet is the primary/only way they will interface with humans – which I would agree with you is terribly limiting. For others, it’s an enabling tool – it can launch relationships and connections that would otherwise never occur, and that could at some point become physical.

The technologies/techniques that beat first world armies are defensive, they can’t beat modern militaries that are on the defensive. Drones don’t work against technologically competent opponents, see how easily Iran has hacked 2 already. Hezbollah used a defense in depth strategy and 3D printing doesn’t change the availability of weapons that much, any half-way competent terrorist or guerrilla can already acquire weapons.

What they can do is limit the political influence of first world nations and disrupt supply lines. Modern militaries are losing in Afghanistan and Iraq because they’re fighting a different style of war than they are designed for.

Concrete bunkers, which is what Hezbollah used, count as defensive. They’re also area denial because defenses do that. But their not area of denial in the same sense a sub is.

And there is a difference between getting one drone through on a surprise and having the enemy respond, if drones become a threat then they’ll likely copy Iran’s techniques. After all, a drone can’t be closed off from outside influence.

Modern militaries can win those wars because they’re designed for a war between armies, not for what is a sort of policing operation. Otherwise they wouldn’t have tanks and other such devices.

The surveillance state is because the US government fears that a foreign power will copy it. And start an insurgency or color revolution, something that if successfully done negates the military.

@Ian My understanding of Special Forces is that they cannot do guerilla warfare because they lack the ability to blend into and become part of a host population. Therefore they are “counter insurgency”. On the other hand, the secret state of Hizbullah is part of what makes it an insurgent force rather than a counter-insurgency, insurgent against Israel and the authoritarians in Lebanon. On that one you likely meant insurgent rather than counter-insurgent.

I don’t have an idea where the surveillance state is exactly going myself. I have the feeling that destroying today’s antiquated surveillance technology just speeds up the installation of more up to date technology. I mean if you can tell where it’s located then it is likely out of date. Of course if the real purpose is security theater then yes it needs to be in your face visible. And maybe that is where you are going. It’s the feeling of being watched that is more insidious than the data of being watched.

On Collapsing Space: I suppose Highs Speed Rail advances also effects some collapse. But maybe there is a trade off. It collapses for the upper middle class but expands for the lower middle class. For the rich the trade off is increased comfort in a private jet during the time spent flying versus the time saved of old by flying super sonic.

@Various on Energy: Peak oil as a concept needs to be replaced with peak air. It is air that we run out of before we run out of dirty fossil fuel. Anyone imaging that in a future 30 or more years down the road we can begin to have so called alternative energy is thinking too far into the future. We need to be thinking of a collapse of gasoline prices within the next 10 to 15 years because of the rapid advance of clean technologies and not because of the huge expensive of cheap dirty fossil fuels. Notice the juxtaposition of expensive and cheap. Right now in Germany the daily spike of electricity is half supplied by wind and solar. It’s because of how cheaply those sources can supply peak needs. Now don’t misunderstand. I am talking about the part of the usage that used to be supplied by natural gas or diesel at peak usage times. Coal and nuclear are still supplying the bulk. But even they are being rapidly supplanted by wind/solar. So much so that the feed-in tariff system used to rapidly create wind/solar sources of energy is now being shifted to speed up the development of electric storage technologies to begin to absorb the excesses of supplies that are beginning to appear in some locales. That is also a problem the Hawaii is beginning to face as well; too much solar in certain parts of their grid.

@alyosha Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 technology began to appear during WWII. It is simply a large flying fuel tank and a small group crazy enough to fly it into a building.

Here’s another request for a definition of “the left.”

Very astute Thomas – I think America’s future looks more like Russia than Mad Max territory. In Russia, life can go on more or less normally if you are little people, as long as you keep your place in the order of things and your “roof” (the network of people, contacts and influence you have who protect you from harm and do you favours, as you do favours for them) in good repair.
Meanwhile, DHS = MVD.

Banks make enormous profits off the drug trade, which is of course why the British forced it upon the Chinese in the late nineteenth century – and HSBC has been hip deep in it ever since. Witness the recent settlement with HSBC concerning, among other crimes, laundering money for Latin American drug cartels. The elite do not seem to care as long as they are getting a substantial cut.

It does not seem to me that the wars on “ideas” (drugs, terrorism) to replace the Cold War propaganda so effectively propagated by the US government against US citizens for the purpose of transferring enormous sums of taxpayer wealth to the military-finance-industrial complex are meant to be won.

The guns certainly have no desire to see an end to lawlesness in Mexico – if it really is the Wild West again, everyone will need a gun. The arms manufacturers clean up supplying what hapless forces of justice remain with advanced weaponry as police forces everywhere are being turned into paramilitary occupations; and the banks take substantial fees and interest, in addition to their laundering profits, by arranging and financing the deals.

Collapse (system, resource, social, economic) is not coming, it is here. We continue to respond irrationally, which is going to significantly increase both the number of lives taken and the misery quotient for those who survive.

Like others on here, I don’t believe Americans are anywhere near primed to do what is necessary to stave off disaster. It is not just that they are bound up unaware in “The Matrix,” they don’t want to be otherwise, too lonely or scary or bewildering to be outside of it. And among our most sacred myths is that when disaster strikes, Americans will always come together to get through it in that more exceptional than other nationalities do kind of way. So things will have to get much, much worse here before they get better, but at this juncture in time, “much, much worse” is past the ecological point of no return – Hansen’s “game-over” scenario.

@Everythings Jake wrote: This [belief in our ability to solve the energy problem] sounds like the hubris of the elites who must believe this because there is no other explanations for why they do not respond sensibly to the imminent crisis.

I hope it doesn’t sound like hubris. I don’t know if humankind will really solve the energy problem. I just look at incentives and trajectories. Given the enormous amount of energy in a single atom (the prize), and all the problems associated with fossil fuel (the costs of failure), and the teams of people working to unlock this energy, I’m inclined to believe they eventually will. I don’ t know if it will be in the next decade or the next century. Or in the next millenium, if the present Dark Age really gets going in earnest.

I imagine how things were five hundred years ago, and how the things we take for granted today would seem like unbelievable magic to people of that time. I wouldn’t stay too locked into the various belief systems that are floating around today. So much is changing, even before our eyes that we could not have foreseen even a few years ago.

@John Puma re: definition of “the left”.

I’ll take a stab at it. I just read something by George Lakoff, that reminded me of your question. Although Lakoff uses the word “progressive”, it could refer to most people on the left. Lakoff wrote:

…Progressives tend to believe that democracy is based on citizens caring for their fellow citizens through what the government provides for all citizens — public infrastructure, public safety, public education, public health, publicly-sponsored research, public forms of recreation and culture, publicly-guaranteed safety nets for those who need them, and so on. In short, progressives believe that the private depends on the public, that without those public provisions Americans cannot be free to live reasonable lives and to thrive in private business. They believe that those who make more from public provisions should pay more to maintain them.

Ultra-conservatives don’t believe this. They believe that Democracy gives them the liberty to seek their own self-interests by exercising personal responsibility, without having responsibility for anyone else or anyone else having responsibility for them….They see the social responsibility to provide for the common good as an immoral imposition on their liberty….

….Moreover, ultra-conservatives do not see all the ways in which they, and other ultra-conservatives, rely all day every day on what other Americans have supplied for them. They actually believe that they built it all by themselves.

I’ve found through experience, that this last paragraph is the easiest way to stop a conservative in their tracks. They’re completely flummoxed when you point out to them all the simple and obvious ways the community around them helped get them to where they are today.

My own shorter definition of “the left” is someone who seeks “the greatest good for the greatest number” because when that happens, I personally benefit. It’s for purely selfish reasons that I consider myself on the left, because reality just seems to work that way. Conservatives generally cannot see this operating in their own lives.

Mike

Thank you for the hasbara. Alas for you facts are not on your side. On every single occasion on which Israel launched one of its vicious and illegal wars against Lebanon they have been forced by Hizbullah’s military action to engage in that well-known military tactic engaged in exclusively by losers known as “running away”.

mfi

It would do well to recall what Von Clausewitz observed in reflection on the Napoleonic wars: that war (violence) was a continuation of (political or state) policy.

As long as there are those who make and administer policy, war (violence) will accompany the policy’s existence, whether it is acted upon or not. State violence enforces and is inseparable from state authority and always the prerogative of those who function is to control policy of the state.

The mater becomes a question of who is to occupy the position of authority, historically answered in several forms of which respublica (commonwealth) is one form in which policy is surrendered by the entitled population to their representatives conducting governance. A democracy is merely where the entitled population directly exercises policy, the extent of suffrage within the population is immaterial to the exercise of policy. In either case, the entitled population ultimately determines policy, and its limitations by their acquiescence to the governmental system in place.

As long as policy is exercised without limitation, Von Clausewitz’s reflections hold true; it is only by such limitation that state policy may not extend into state violence but at the cost to state power, something seldom if ever recorded.

As long as there is unlimited state policy there will be war or violence as a means of enforcing policy, that is and will be the future, it is hardwired into exercising power in the species.

Well, that didn’t work. here’s a link.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/roubini-doom-scenario-looks-1914-105552501.html

I don’t agree. There was no intent to win in Latin America or Afghanistan (and frankly I don’t think they really cared if they won in Iraq either – Bush killed the guy who tried to off his dead, we just supplied the most expensive hitman ever).

Clearly, in Colombia at least, the war on drugs has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with fundamental capitalist aims, to upend the ab
ability of the peasantry to provide for itself on their own land. Michael Perelman’s “The Invention of Capitalism” is instructive here.

Afghanistan is basically a rehash (no pun intended) of the Opium wars. Anyone who believes this is an accident is probably smoking the results much to the elite’s delight (remember the Roosevelts among others made fortunes off Chinese opium): http://publicintelligence.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/AfghanOpiumSurvey2012-1.png. That’s not to mention the bankers, who probably knew before the UN did that laundered drug profits kept enough liquidity in the system in 2008 and 2009 to keep it from crashing entirely.

Also, too, the U.S. military is not supposed to win. Where is the profit in that? G.B.S screamed that (with too much wit and elegance) in “Arms and the Man.”

The wealthy power holders have always made enormous profits off vice. The British and French transported and sold drugs to the Chinese in the 19th century; the ancient Romans purchased sex slaves for the bordellos they ran from the back of the Villa in 19 BCE. Periodically things get bad enough and out arise someone to oppose the powerful wealthy and overturn the status quo. Their children and grandchildren then sell the vice and slaves until they in turn are overthrown. The wheel always turns; they cycle always repeats.

I don’t think the USG wants to win wars, they just want to look like they’re winning so they can keep going. I don’t have this number handy but the US sells more weapons by far (and it is amazing amount more) than the world’s next largest arms dealer, Russia. USG is selling to almost everyone, on every side of almost every conflict. I thinking actual winning would be a bad thing for USG because gobs of money is made in weapons, financing, supply and supposed “rebuilding” of recently devastated parts of the world. Tearing everything down creates a firesale of resources to the rich and connected. Scahill talked about this, how there is only an incentive for more war, the more contractors get into the fray. Janine Wedel also refers to this process/consequence in her book: “Shadow Elite”.

Surveillance is a toy, a godsend of money, a grandiose power trip and it’s essential to controlling populations who might revolt.

Yes, these people are scared but I think they are scared of populations who will try to stop their wars, their illegalities, their surveillance and propaganda. I think they are not bothered that much by armed conflict, they likely sold the weapons involved. I don’t know what they plan to do about the massive environmental degradation their work causes on earth. They are already engage in geoengineering so that tells me they are both worried and incredibly stupid.

@ Neolithic Simulation January 24, 2014

They’re next-to-useless useless for anything but counterinsurgency,

Hizballah – about whom you’ll find plenty to read on this site not least because they have a habit of winning their wars, beg leave to disagree.

mfi

@ Adam Eran January 24, 2014

and has some surprising observations about insurgency that, as far as I can tell, predate Petreus echoing his conclusions

Wearing my hat beret as a professional military officer with a lifetime’s experience allow me to point out that you Americans LOST your war in South East Asia. You LOST your war in Lebanon before it could even get properly started. You LOST your war in Irak, and you LOST your war in Afghanistan. And it appears that you’ve also LOST your proxy war in Syria.

You LOST all these wars using the techniques advocated by Petraeus and the LW/COIN merchants.

Long may you continue to use those tactics.

As for the Incas how long did it take for their empire to collapse in the face of an enemy not even slightly shy about using overwhelming violence at the drop of a Morion?

mfi

Via the FAS newsletter comes this very interesting document: Energy-Water Nexus: The Water Sector’s Energy Use

mfi

markfromireland
January 25, 2014
@ Celsius 233 January 24, 2014
Mostly you’re and I agree but this:
The standards today are rock bottom; criminals, drug addicts, miscreants, and psychopaths are welcome now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I stand corrected. I failed to further qualify my statement and thus, far too broad a brush was applied.
Your’s is for more to the facts as practiced. I was speaking to the army (and didn’t specify) and also forgot to mention the contractors (Blackwater as an example) . I feel they were not vetted to standards either.
Cheers (PS, I’m not a leftie 😉 )

markfromireland
January 25, 2014
@ Celsius 233 January 25, 2014
~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks and you’re a great source, “on the ground”, for the real deal, unfiltered (mostly I’d guess).
As to The Saturday Choral? Where the hell do you find the time for that excellence?
Cheers.

@ Pelham January 25, 2014

I would only say that, in addition to all the awful downsides of this type of conflict, there is the not inconsiderable upside of high adventure, with widespread resistance providing a bracing test and revival of the human spirit of justice, equity and rightly motivated rage.

You do realise that this is total complete absolute and utterly unrelieved shite don’t you? I’ve spent my entire adult life as a professional military officer in one of the most violent and war-torn parts of the world (the Middle East). I started my career as a specialist with a more than ordinarily risky specialism (bomb disposal). During nearly four decades of service I’ve come under fire repeatedly and survived a several assassination attempts.

Adventure my ass. There is nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever, adventurous or glamorous or good for the character about war. It’s squalid and vicious and the stench of dead and decaying humans is absolutely fucking revolting. So is the God-awful faecal stench of a human being whose been gut shot. That unforgettably awful stench is matched in its awfulness only by the animal shrieking of the person who has been shot. With any luck they faint because their nervous system simply can’t cope with that level of pain and shock. Then there’s starving and terrified civilians many of whom have diarrhea because they’re either reduced to eating contaminated food or to drinking contaminated water or more usually both …

Go and read what Ian has written again here I’ll make it easy for you:

such fights leave countries in ruins. If the elites continue on their current course, in many first world countries, Iraq and Afghanistan and Mexico are the future. People with no future will fight, and too many people now know how this form of war works

What Ian is describing is something so close to the Hobbesian state of nature as to be well-nigh indistinguishable from it. I’ve seen it Lebanon, I’ve seen it in Irak, and now I’m seeing it in Syria. There is nothing absolutely fucking nothing of and I quote you directly “a bracing test and revival of the human spirit of justice, equity and rightly motivated rage” about any of it it is one of the most appalling calamities and sources of evil known to man. Go a and ask the Chechens what happens when a modern state unleashes its full power and might against a civilian population.

Christ preserve us all from dangerous buffoons like you.

mfi

Why on earth would your ruling class (I’m assuming you’re an American) be afraid of the supine, cowardly, and increasingly atomised American populace?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’m not quite sure what MFI means by atomised or what segments of the US he is describing as supine and cowardly, and it sounds like he has little idea what it is like to live in the various regions of the US. Maybe he is talking about the stereotype of effete urban liberals or the suburban white middle classes that have been in decline for over a generation. But as an American, I can tell you that many segments of the US are armed to the teeth and have some military background and are chomping at the bit to kill (see our stand-your-ground laws). And we already have lots of gun violence every day. It seems like workplace or school rampages happen once or twice a week anymore. Maybe not the kind of violence that could support a coherent political agenda, but for the most part the common man in this country doesn’t have any sort of coherent politics so that would be impossible.
But liberal Americans do or should fear the day that any of it starts to gel into something more organized, because it will most definitely NOT be workers and the oppressed rising up to demand their fair share that will be the downfall of our society, such as it is. It will be something like the Tea Party where they show up armed at town hall meetings on healthcare reform to demand the government keep its hands off of Medicare. That is: stupid angry Murdoch propagandized idiots full of self contradictory ideas armed and ready to kill libruls, with the military and law enforcement agencies lending support or at least complicitly looking the other way. If liberals or blacks or muslims started buying guns and organizing to protect themselves, the bloodbath would start before it could get off the ground on some manufactured pretext.

A common theme posits that America is awash in guns; that’s true (but in and of itself is meaningless). Then, by extension of faulty logic, this is supposed to equate to ability and power. That there are veterans with combat experience is also true. But again by extension of faulty logic these ones would not represent meaningful numbers or effect.
And lastly it seems that we think Iraqis and Afghan insurgents ability to fight superior forces is evidence that we in America can do the same. IMO, this is a false assumption. What isn’t taken into account is the character of the individuals and their respective societies and to compare Americans to these people is just evidence of a lack of understanding of the significance of the differences. These are a tough, genuinely tough people/societies who’ve been fighting continuously for generations.
I have read from those who have been there that Afghans may be the toughest fighters in the world.
I’ll qualify my comments by saying I am a certified instructor of rifle, pistol, and shotgun and been around firearms for 60 years. I have been an expert in small arms and fail to see how that will benefit an armed insurgency in America; pure fantastical thinking, IMO.
If there are mass uprisings, sans arms; that will be the effective way to make change; John Wayne is dead.

So keep your delusion that gun possession will protect you; my opinion may be wrong, lets see if your guns are as good as you believe, or when you pull them –
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Does TBear really believe that all those assault weapons and ammo out there will somehow disappear overnight? If so, he is obviously reading right wing delusional lit. Look at Yugoslavia or almost anywhere in Latin America.
Those guns didn’t just get out there because of an innocent but misguided interpretation of the 2nd amendment. It is and was a deliberate arming of the right, and 99% of those people so armed will be the private death squads used to crush and lynch anyone to the left of Atila the Hun. No government can use atrocities to oppress everyone on the left and right. They always co-opt the right to for their popular support and to do the dirty work that’s even too dirty for them.

Also, all communication has already been monitored and stored for years and years. Google “snowden”. And a huge number of Americans, maybe most, are good with that. They certainly won’t be raising objections when the “troublemakers” like Code Pink end up tortured and murdered at the local soccer stadium equivalent.

@ guest

What you have just excreted is a pile of emotional rubbish. I suppose it makes you feel good, warm and fuzzy. Your level of ignorance is to be expected though, it is obvious from your excrementa consisting solely of your dismal adolescent opinion; and the threats, are you for real? Is it your marvellous ability to discuss and convince that makes such threats necessary? Crush and lynch anybody to the left … – Oh my! isn’t that so sweet.

No. You are a jejune jerk, stupid, ignorant and filled with yourself. This subject is closed.

@Celsius 233

Your right about the Afghans, but having experience is not the only reason they are tough. There is also religion, anger and poverty with almost no chance of escaping it. Fear the man with nothing left to lose. Not enough Americans have got there yet, but it’s just a matter of time. Look at all those tent cities and folks sleeping in cars and under overpasses. Now they are cutting down on food stamps.
I think you missed my point on collateral damage. Collateral damage creates revolutionaries and terrorist. See, American foreign policy. I would count all the returning soldiers and service personal who are ending their own lives (2 per day) as collateral damage. They were lied to then abandon. Many of their friends and family know this and are pissed. Millions of people have been abandon and there will be millions more to come.
If any one wanted to bring down TPTB, they can do much of it by targeting infrastructure. For example, one skilled person could severely damage a lot of infrastructure from a keyboard maybe even bring down the grid. What if some group of nut jobs blew up a few sub stations or a bunch of transmission towers? Not a good idea, because it could result in a nuclear power plant meltdown, but crazy people do crazy things.
As for “meaningful numbers” it often starts with small numbers. Just look at how few there were at beginning of the American revolution.
Your not the first to claim “pure fantastical thinking”. It’s been said many times before. Like, all around London in 1774-75 and at Versailles in 1789. I find it interesting when people say something can’t happen, when it has already happened thousands of time throughout human history.

http://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/electric-grid-energy/

Addendum; I was on the streets protesting Vietnam (more than once) so, this is of course, my considered opinion.
Our government is broken, our votes are predetermined (worthless), and our rights trampled with impunity.
I see no other remedy.

Clausewitz said that war is politics by other means. When international politics becomes totally defined by war, an arms race occurs that has unpredictable results in destructive power, terror, or comparative economics. The United States through its domineering style of overthrowing governments to suit specific capitalist corporations has place evolutionary pressure that has reduced the cost of weaponry and communications. And then the US has had technology programs like drones and the internet that further reduce the costs of weaponry. And increase the pervasiveness, destructiveness, and persistence of warfare in it destruction of human communities and economic infrastructure. Consider, just for a start, how much land contains unexploded ordnance and how that has gone from the blockbusters of WWII to the millions of mines and cluster munitions since.

The future of war in the developed world just moves the presence of war in the developing world to just another geography.