SYSTEMS DISRUPTION SWARMS

A new variation on an extremely old method of warfare has emerged. This new method is called systems disruption -- which has been a major theme of this weblog since its inception. Based on extensive analysis, I believe that systems disruption will become the dominant method of warfare for non-state networks against nation-states.

It consists of simple attacks (using ad hoc weapons) on critical nodes of infrastructure -- oil, gas, electricity, water, etc. These attacks, if properly targeted, can cause cascades of failure that sweep entire systems. The result is a paralyzed economy that produces costs that far outstrip the costs of the attack (this is a guerrilla version of the American air power method called effects-based operations). This new method vastly improves on the three other ways non-state entities have fought strategically with states in the past:

• Moral conflict. 4th generation guerrilla war. A slow and difficult process of erosion.
• Strategic symbolic terrorism. A variant of moral conflict that can be projected. Pushed to a new level by al Qaeda. Limited in its long term impact. Requires extensive pre-planning and flawless execution.
• WMDs. Limited and flawed attempts in the past. Requires extensive knowledge and likely state support to accomplish correctly.

Lessons
In Iraq, systems disruption is the 'secret sauce' of the insurgency. A series of relatively infrequent and small attacks have held the Iraqi electricity, oil, and water systems at nearly pre-war levels despite a massive reconstruction campaign. This success has fueled the insurgency by creating economic chaos and radically decreasing the legitimacy of both the US occupation and the new Iraqi government. These attacks boast the following attributes:

• Easy, inexpensive, and safe. Almost none of infrastructure attackers have been caught or killed. Infrastructure networks are notoriously easy to destroy using ad hoc weapons and have a vast number of vulnerable points.
• Fuels fragmentation. The decimation of primary services provides a way to fragment the target state's population. If cultural fault lines are present (Huntington), this will accelerate the descent to primary loyalties and conflict.
• Fantastic ROIs. The network effect of infrastructure attacks can produce returns on investment in the thousands of percent (a rate of return recognized by bin Laden)

How this works
Over time, systems disruption will become the most effective method by which virtual states subvert or coerce target nation-states. It does this by:

• Leveraging external connections. Systems disruption uses the ties of globalization against the target state. By making it an unreliable business partner it hurts its ability to compete globally and retain relationships. These partners (often morally ambivalent markets), will put heavy pressure on the target state to resolve the crisis.
• Minimizing moral opposition. Symbolic or body count centric attacks increase the moral staying power of target states. In contrast, the blame for sustained systems disruption typically rebounds onto the state itself. Since almost all wars in the future will be over marginal objectives (external to the life and death of the state or the central well being of its populace), attacks that radically increase costs without a corresponding increase in moral commitment have a high likelihood of success.
• Riding urbanization. The growth of urbanization is a global megatrend. These urban centers are the economic lifeblood of a nation-state and typically the key points of connection to the world. Large cities, however, offer a green field of vulnerability to this method of attack. The larger the cities, the more reliant it is on key systems. Systems disruption can quickly collapse urban environments into disaster zones.

I have detailed two scenarios (last year) that show systems disruption in action:

Russia. More.

Saudi Arabia.

Comments

[Geoff]

Stumbled across your blog a week or so ago; I don't remember how or why...

I like how you think.

This method, system disruption, isn't just warfare related. It sounds a lot like what populations do to protest their gov't; by boycott or strike, sabotage, et cetera... In this case though, the desired outcome isn't violence, but I guess it remains a possibility.

[Roland Dobbins]

This sort of thing isn't new at all - it's called a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, see http://www.denialinfo.com/ .

[John Robb]

Geoff, this could certainly be used in protest.

Roland, in terms of warfare, DoS attacks are very, very new. It's a very good parallel though, but the mechanism is different.

[nykrindc]

This is Thomas Barnett's System Perturbation. On 9/11, al Qaeda went after our financial, political and military might. They used this tactic again in Spain, where following their attacks the Spanish people ousted the government of President Aznar and brought to power the Socialist government of Zapatero; changing with one strike the geopolitical map of Europe for the next few years. Spain went from joining forces with Britain, Poland and other smaller powers to balance France and Germany, to a closer allliance with them, making the likelyhood of reform of the EU a lot less likely. Likewise, the US attempted to creat its own System Perturbation in the Middle East by taking down Saddam and attempting to establish a moderate regime in Iraq. This is a work in progress, and it remains to be seen whether we will pull Iraq off. This however may not matter in the long run as that one System Perturbation has already made the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon possible. Regardless of the outcome of Iraq, the Middle East of ten years from now will no longer be the Middle East of today. In reality this type of attack is not new, insofar as it is what insurgencies have always aimed to do. Your Iraq example is not so much a new phenomenon as part of the long history of insurgency wars. What is new is the fact that for the first time a non-state entity (al Qaeda) has challenged the power of the world hegemon (and by extension the system it upholds) on a global scale.

[Capt. Jean-Luc Pikachu]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickie/44991244/in/set-983397/

Nothing new under the sun...

[Casey Kelley]

Don't like to be picky, but the Spanish elections, according to polls, turned the other way not because of the attack necessarily, but because of the blatant lies told by President Aznar -- who persisted in blaming the Basque separatists long after the truth was known.

[Valdis]

System Disruption Quiz

Go to this web page and look at the network diagram...
It is a work flow network of a small work group, but could also be an infrastructure network map of other resource flows.

http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html

Now, which one node would you remove/cripple to maximally disrupt this network?

Post your answers[and reasons why] here and let's discuss.

[Valdis]

> Nothing new under the sun...

I don't think John's point is that this strategy is "new", just that it is easy and effective.

An innovator adapts what is 'old hat' in one group to a new situation in a second group. An innovator is a boundary spanner who transfers and adapts knowledge and learning.

[nykrindc]

Casey Kelley: the Spanish elections, according to polls, turned the other way not because of the attack necessarily, but because of the blatant lies told by President Aznar -- who persisted in blaming the Basque separatists long after the truth was known.

You are correct. But remember, perceptions sometimes tend to be more important than reality. The perception created by the Madrid attacks was that a democratically elected government was subject to "regime change" if the attack came at the appropriate time.

[TM Lutas]

The engineers have noted that infrastructure networks are vulnerable for quite a long time. There's been a lot of work put in to limit cascading failures in all infrastructure networks and it's been going on for decades. There's currently a window of opportunity but it's closing. It'll close faster the more that infrastructure attacks are actually used.

[Charlie Kester]

I'm less interested in the novelty claim than I am in System Disruption as an accurate description of what the insurgents/terrorists/global-guerillas are doing to attack the State.

...and, as far as I can see, it is accurate. Thank you, John, for highlighting it.

[kevin de bruxelles]

The BBC is reporting a huge blast at a fuel depot near Hemel Hempstead. They are saying it's an accident but who knows, perhaps a campaign of System Disruption is under way in hte UK. They are so vulnerable thare that it wouldn't take much to bring them to their knees.

[dan]

Kevin

The most successful campaign of 'system disruption' in the UK's recent history was the fuel protest of 2000 - when a coalition of farmers, independent haulage contractors and their associates blockaded the just-in-time fuel distribution network - they had some assistance from petrol company tanker drivers in this, who refused to run the blockades. It took about 4 days for the protest to clear the streets of London of traffic as the petrol stations ran out of fuel, and were starved of deliveries; as a non-driver I quite enjoyed it, although the buses did get more crowded than usual.

The government backed down and scrapped some of the fuel duties that were in the "pipeline"; needless to say, petrol prices are higher today than they were back in 2000, and the attempts of this September to recreate the protests were a dismal failure. It's possible that a very disgruntled independent haulage contractor has despaired of peaceful protest, and has gone down the 'global guerrila' route; I'm skeptical of this myself.

[Tom Lord]

I don't understand the logic behind these kinds of system attacks (by inferior force enemies). The only psychology I see behind it is a rabid, self-defeating infantilism:

Yes, the attacks can do a lot of damage -- got that.

First: isn't this a case of defecating where you consume? When ubiquitous power, communications, water, food, etc. are largely gone, how are GGs going to remain operational? They are parasitic on the very infrastructure they are attacking. As much as anything else, they are attacking their own supply lines and logistics infrastructure. (I'm reminded of the cartoon Pinky in the Brain where, episode after episode the plotting Brain comes up with a randomly disruptive scheme that ends with "and in the ensuing chaos, TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD".)

Second, these kinds of attacks may seriously challenge conventional armies fighting against GGs but in what position does that put the commanders? The availability of these networks empowers the commanders to fight a long strategic war with as much morally inspired restraint as they can possibly muster (e.g., witness our advances in precision bombing). If the option of restraint is taken away in a definitive way -- really before that: if it looks certain to soon be taken away in a definitive way -- the next strategy on the list isn't "roll over", it's "win with less descriminate application of force". (If infantilism and irrationality doesn't explain the GG leadership, the next explanation is that they are crypto enemies of the very cultures and people they claim to be the liberators of, aiming precisely to provoke that indiscriminate response.)

Third, as another commentor pointed out, the tipping point looks a bit far off and, meanwhile, every such systems attack steps up the effort to build redundancies, distribution, and defensibility into critical networks. GGs can make life miserable and cause 10s, even 100s of thousands of individual tragedies for a long time but the end result at the scales we seem them working (or even rather larger), the GGs are just "helping" to debug systems in an obnoxious and reprehensible way. The GGs in the medium to long term are destroying their own tactical options.

Fourth: a common assumption is that the systems attack tactics of GGs are aimed at provoking attrition. We are supposed to get sad and frustrated and just leave, hat in hand. Sorry, but, the WMD threat is precisely why that Ain't Gonna Happen. We can make temporary and tactical withdrawls here and there, where it makes sense, but withdrawing from the war itself is tantamount to suicide. Although there has been only a bare minimum of consciousness raising about the nature of the threat, that can change as necessary -- a GG attrition-based strategy seems doomed to failure.

Fourth, GGs depend on achieving popular support from those populations they would subjugate and relegate to ignorance. Yet the further they persue these systems strategies, the more of an object lesson they provide for these very populations. One side builds useful stuff. The other side mostly destroys useful stuff and occaisionally seizes some of it and tries to leverage that control. While the populations in question interpret this within narratives such as "occupation and resistance" the GGs can make political progress but, without a rapid victory, their narrative tatters and they reveal themselves as the hateful troublemakers they are -- they're blowing their own cover.

To be fair to the GG leadership, I think they appreciate these facts to a degree. As interesting as how they employ tactical systems attacks is how they *don't* employ them. They are banking on, for example, naive popular conceptions of the conflict becoming dominant in US politics. Seeing the very ego-cententric psychology of GG leadership, I suspect that they think they are finessing a victory -- picking just the right mix of political action and systems attacks to find a sweet spot where their enemy (us) falls apart psychologically and politically and the populations the GGs first want to enslave still see the GGs as heros.

I don't see any reason to believe or even suspect that such a sweet-spot actually exists -- quite the opposite. For example, there's quite the appearence of a viable anti-war movement here in the U.S. but surely one must notice that the closer those who would be sympathetic to that are to sources of intelligence -- the less likely they are to be serious supporters.

Haven't the GGs basically sealed their loss? Isn't the question now one of how to make the tide come in against them fastest and most humanely?

There is no God but that God in the hearts of good people, praise be.
-t

[AoT]

" don't understand the logic behind these kinds of system attacks (by inferior force enemies). The only psychology I see behind it is a rabid, self-defeating infantilism:

Yes, the attacks can do a lot of damage -- got that.

First: isn't this a case of defecating where you consume? When ubiquitous power, communications, water, food, etc. are largely gone, how are GGs going to remain operational? They are parasitic on the very infrastructure they are attacking. As much as anything else, they are attacking their own supply lines and logistics infrastructure. (I'm reminded of the cartoon Pinky in the Brain where, episode after episode the plotting Brain comes up with a randomly disruptive scheme that ends with "and in the ensuing chaos, TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD".)"

To some extent this, defecating where you consume, is true in the situation that exists in Iraq currently; however it is hardly a cross situational truism. If you look back at one of the older GG posts on systems disruption based around the idea of a group in the american NW tring to end the use of oil in the area you can see a good example of a workable situation for this strategy.

As for the GGs in Iraq being dependent upon the infrastructure whist they are destraying, definitly not. Many of their tactics come from GGs experience in Afghanistan during theRussian occupation and flollowing civil war, an area with negligible infrastructure.

"Second, these kinds of attacks may seriously challenge conventional armies fighting against GGs but in what position does that put the commanders? The availability of these networks empowers the commanders to fight a long strategic war with as much morally inspired restraint as they can possibly muster (e.g., witness our advances in precision bombing). If the option of restraint is taken away in a definitive way -- really before that: if it looks certain to soon be taken away in a definitive way -- the next strategy on the list isn't "roll over", it's "win with less descriminate application of force". (If infantilism and irrationality doesn't explain the GG leadership, the next explanation is that they are crypto enemies of the very cultures and people they claim to be the liberators of, aiming precisely to provoke that indiscriminate response.)"

A couple points here. GGs often do not have commanders in the sense that one would see them in a traditional military, they have something closer to squad leaders, group councils or simply work in groups so small as not to necessitate any command structure (see ALF or ELF in the US)

I would also differ with you on your view in regards to escalation being somehow inevitable after a certain level of success has been achieved by GGs. I would posit that in situations where an outside party is the percieved enemy it is possible to drain the will of that enemy. The usefulness of this in civil war situations would be greatly diminished.

"Third, as another commentor pointed out, the tipping point looks a bit far off and, meanwhile, every such systems attack steps up the effort to build redundancies, distribution, and defensibility into critical networks. GGs can make life miserable and cause 10s, even 100s of thousands of individual tragedies for a long time but the end result at the scales we seem them working (or even rather larger), the GGs are just "helping" to debug systems in an obnoxious and reprehensible way. The GGs in the medium to long term are destroying their own tactical options."

This sounds more like wishful thinking than an objective look at realistic outcomes. the targets of these systems disruptions are, necessarily, at points where redundancy is most difficult to build into the system. Oil pipeline are just to expensive to built enough back ups to resist a determines systems disruption, especially in areas which are seeing other forms of attack.

"Fourth: a common assumption is that the systems attack tactics of GGs are aimed at provoking attrition. We are supposed to get sad and frustrated and just leave, hat in hand. Sorry, but, the WMD threat is precisely why that Ain't Gonna Happen. We can make temporary and tactical withdrawls here and there, where it makes sense, but withdrawing from the war itself is tantamount to suicide. Although there has been only a bare minimum of consciousness raising about the nature of the threat, that can change as necessary -- a GG attrition-based strategy seems doomed to failure."

The arguement over WMDs is at this point moot, even if it is suicidal to withdraw the GGs can break the will of an occupying country, especially if it is a democracy.

"[Fifth], GGs depend on achieving popular support from those populations they would subjugate and relegate to ignorance. Yet the further they persue these systems strategies, the more of an object lesson they provide for these very populations. One side builds useful stuff. The other side mostly destroys useful stuff and occaisionally seizes some of it and tries to leverage that control. While the populations in question interpret this within narratives such as "occupation and resistance" the GGs can make political progress but, without a rapid victory, their narrative tatters and they reveal themselves as the hateful troublemakers they are -- they're blowing their own cover."

The view of the general population towards the GGs and the other side is generally more complicated than that. While the population likes the idea of new things being built it is also ovious to them that these things are not capable of being effectively protected, which makes them, and their builders, transitory. They do not expect the things to work, so the blame for them not working is put upon the occupiers. If the occupiers were not there then the GGs would not be destroying the infrastructure, in theory.

"To be fair to the GG leadership, I think they appreciate these facts to a degree. As interesting as how they employ tactical systems attacks is how they *don't* employ them. They are banking on, for example, naive popular conceptions of the conflict becoming dominant in US politics. Seeing the very ego-cententric psychology of GG leadership, I suspect that they think they are finessing a victory -- picking just the right mix of political action and systems attacks to find a sweet spot where their enemy (us) falls apart psychologically and politically and the populations the GGs first want to enslave still see the GGs as heros.

I don't see any reason to believe or even suspect that such a sweet-spot actually exists -- quite the opposite. For example, there's quite the appearence of a viable anti-war movement here in the U.S. but surely one must notice that the closer those who would be sympathetic to that are to sources of intelligence -- the less likely they are to be serious supporters.

Haven't the GGs basically sealed their loss? Isn't the question now one of how to make the tide come in against them fastest and most humanely?"

I would say just the opposite. The GGs have been incredibly effective at underminding the support of the iraqi public and the american public for American troops in Iraq. The US military is having trouble meeting its recruiting goals, without reducing their target numbers. More and more Iraqis want us to leave everyday. More and more Americans want us to leave. ore and more of the coalition of the willing is leaving.

All in all the GGs strategy has been highly effective and it is only a matter of time before the U.S. leaves Iraq. I would say most of our troops will either leave or be mobilizing to leave by the 2006 elections.

[Joe]

Actually, since our nation was born through an 8 year guerilla war against that period's superpower, we have fought and crushed many 'insurgencies' and 'guerilla movements'. Indeed, the US Marine Corps even has an OLD manual teaching precisely how to defeat insurgents and guerillas.

Which is why the Marines DO win whenever they are engaged in a fight with ANY enemy.

The only thing keeping us from winning totally in Iraq is politics, not a lack of military power or effective strategies.

[Tom Lord]

Joe:

I think that both ethics and strategic goals keep us from "winning totally" in the sense you describe.

The best outcome, generally undersold in the U.S., is that the criminals become exactly that: simple criminals -- the subject of domestic law enforcement efforts carried out by Iraqis. Community policing is the best, most sensitive policing and, frankly, the U.S. can never be more than a blunt instrument there. We have carefully considered, continuously reviewed rules of engagement and tactical plans precisely to restrain ourselves from using that blunt instrument indiscriminately.

Strategically, Iraq is a big place with lots of people. It could be conquered rather trivially but then what? Hold and defend? To what end? At what cost? A war for oil? And at what additional cost in lives? No, the strategic aim here is liberation and entre to the age of the Enlightment for 26M people. This is a population moving from being part of a totalitarian oppressive state to being with us and others on the front-lines of the war for civilization.

Crushing the enemy absolutely is emotionally tempting, I agree, but doesn't lead to a place we want to wind up at. That's not a bad summary of my questions in the earlier comment: the systems attack strategies, if they accomplish any shift, force exactly that -- crushing the enemy in a definitive "game over" sense. The _in effect_ strategic aim of this enemy seems to be rational only from that perspective and so, to whatever degree they are enemies of the U.S., they seem even more to be enemies of those populations they would speak for.

-t

[Joe]

The USMC manual on guerilla warfare (written before WW2) doesn't envision a 'total war' on a civilian population or otherwise blunt use of armed might.... it does envision discrimanatory attacks, use of intelligence, seizing, clearing and holding ground with the help of indigenous populations (given that the USMC is small in size and thus can't have boots on the ground everywhere).

But how many Americans (especially clue-less journalists) even know we WROTE THE BOOK ON INSURGENCY AND COUNTER-INSURGENCY OPERATIONS??? It's called the Small Wars Manual. That's right, the Commies learned from US, not us from the commies. Our 'founding fathers' waged guerilla warfare successfully two centuries before Mao.

As for the goal today on our global war on terror...simple: unconditional surrender of the state sponsors of terrorists of international reach and the annihilation or incarceration of the actual footsoldiers of such groups, PLUS the intellectual defeat of their ideology by proving on the ground that it does not lead to the utopia it's propaganda arm claims it does.

Bush laid this out in October 2001, warned us we'd be in for a LOOOOONG WAR, involving MANY distict campaigns (the axis of evil countries need to be taken out and all non-state terror groups dismantled.)

But did anyone (especially the MSM) actually take the time to read what he said or take him at his word? Nah. But now they get to turn around and claim he never told us his "plan"...but I digress.

How many divisions did it take to topple the Taliban? None. It took about a company strength of SOF and judicious use of airpower plus indigenous troops. Now about 1 division is there "holding" the whole place.

In Iraq, multiple things are going on at once, but we are losing the media propaganda war only; militarily, economically and politically we are cleaning house. But the pen is mightier than the sword so we eventually need to defeat intellectually the arguments of the terrorists and their Western sympathizers...but that takes time and it also takes real changes on the ground (defeats for the enemy and real accomplishments for our allies).

The problem is though, the theological and philosophical debunking of Osama et al. has probably already been done, but our propaganda and education complex won't report and hype this message as they're in bed with the very enemy we're fighting (or at least consider them potential allies in their war against what they consider the 'true' threat to their 'way of life': Christianity and the "right" in general.

[Tom Lord]

Joe, mostly just a quick thanks, partly a "don't panic":

Thanks for the specifics of the USMC stuff you were talking about and your contextualizing it. I know more than most average citizens about a lot of this stuff but I also still have huge gaps on some basics and little hints like that help me fill in those gaps. Uh... semper fi, if that's not too corny or otherwise inappropriate coming from me.

Overall goal: kinda, yeah. But also, no. Total surrender is the stick. Any sane observer knows we can and are basically willing to enforce that outcome, if it comes to it. Any wise observer knows we envision very possible situations in which we have no other good choice -- that's what's got us so worked up in the foreign policy department, broadly speaking. Lack of choice in this area is the kernel of the preemptive action doctrine. The WMD controversy -- the mere fact that reasonable people can't form a consensus about the degree of threat -- combined with the state of technology -- is proof of the threat.

Diplomacy isn't dead. A serious, real (for a change) shift in ways -- reform -- is still on the table for these states. That's reform from within. That's the carrot. The carrot is where the Win/Win scenarios can be found. My read is that the carrot has a big chance. That leadership on all sides in the U.S. are willing to pay high personal political prices for the carrot (but only for definate return) because -- well, values including unselfishness, man. It sure looks like diplomacy's chances are shakier when you've got the Iranian president (for example) reiterating holocaust denial but even that can turn into a foot-in-mouth problem for him (perhaps he should go appear on British reality TV as a contestent who thinks he's been blasted into space but is really living in a hanger, somewhere).

Don't panic so much about the confused "lefties" in the U.S. There are indications of soul searching go on on that side. They aren't as influential as you might think from surface appearences. Be aware that the fear of (especially evangelical and fundamentalist) Christianity is not its existence or participation in the political process so much as the insistence of some members of the right that those values and that religious tradition be dominant and more or less come to trump the Constitution as many of us have come to understand it. There *are*, on the "right", some pretty powerful, cynical jack-asses who simultaneously abuse their flock and attack basic civil rights. I think this too, has a good chance of being sorted out before it does huge harm. Polarization is not the right direction, though.

-t

[Joe]

Well, I for one have read what the Leftist organizations have been writing for decades and they are the ones claiming Christianity (the moral system and its believers not so much its theology)is their chief obstacle in getting Utopia up and running.

I have read what "Christianity" has had to say about America and the world in general and I don't see any concerted push by ANY group to FORCE its views on others via the state or courts. Holding the line (status quo) or begging to differ as to the super-right status of abortion isn't the same thing as foisting one's religion on someone else.

The Constitutional system we have puts the legislature and amendment process at the disposal of 'the people' to get the laws or 'rights' they want - not the courts. That the "right" and Christians point this out and seek to maintain the status quo on this hardly constitutes an 'attack' or theocratic power grab against those "who come to believe their rights are in danger". There are no Right motivated WTO riots, race riots, or ELF arson attacks... not even a conspiracy of Pro-life groups to attack abortion clinics or personnel. 32 years of abortion, some 20 million pro-lifers and only 7 abortionists have been killed by 3 nut-cases....

So where does the Left get the idea that the Right is a vote away from theocracy or concentration camps?

But the Left sees defense as offensive. They see counter-argument as "an attack", and likewise seem to lose all sense of proportion and the ability to distinguish between someone trying to persuade with reasons (either by evangelization or public expression of faith) and someone trying to coerce by passing laws, suing, getting government money mandating 'sensitivity training' etc.....

When they "push the envelope" with Porn we're all supposed to 'be mature' and 'open minded' about this. But when the Right suggests a change in sex-ed for the sake of children, suddenly it's the Taliban. Which makes me wonder where exactly the Left is "progressing" towards?

Like militant Islam, the Left believes in a Utopian world where they have total power - while demanding the Right to 'share power' they make no such concessions on college campi or board rooms.

Both see the "Right" and Christianity as competitors at best and enemies at worst - in their OWN literature.

Osama rants about "crusaders" (and not secularists, oddly) and the Left rants about "theocrats" (but not Muslim theocrats). The first sees 'progress' as essentially the conversion of the world to Islam - and thus a religion vs religion conflict, whereas the second sees 'progress' as essentially the secularization and hedonization of the West (to hell with the East) and hence sees Christianity (and Catholics in particular) as serious kill-joys.

The thing is.... both are right. The Christian (and primarily Catholic) forces in the world ARE the chief bulwark of the West against a resurgent Islam and against a would-be atheistic hedonist 'secular paradise'. They know it, we just need to accept the terms of battle.

[Tom Lord]

Joe, this is wandering way off topic. (You can write to me directly, lord a t ee em eff . en ee tee if you want to continue other than that I'll give you the last word here if you like.) So, last post on this line:

Neither the left or right is a monolith. I'm basically on the left, for example, and, as you can see, I'm rather hawkish. I'm a huge states rights fan, although I don't agree with most of the legal criticisms of Roe v. Wade that I've heard and I've been overheard expressing a certain underwhelmed impression of the writing and speaches of certain conservative members of the SCOTUS. I've also been read, at least in dinky local papers (Berkeley, no less) scolding "left" nutcases for denigrating red-staters as "pickup-truck with shotgun loons" and the like (if I could afford it, I'd personally have both). I don't beleive in utopian visions. I do believe in community standards re porn (but also believe in an unregulated Internet). The list could go on for quite a while and, to the point: I'm far from alone on the left.

The "right" (not the right, but the "right", the same way I distinguish left from "left") has given us plenty of violent phenomenon but I don't tar the right with Tim McVay, attacks on and assinations of civil rights fighters, or creating an international incident by calling for the assination of the President of Venezuala.

I believe that religious beliefs are private, not public matters -- it's an interesting question in constitutional law to figure out how to reconcile that with those who believe the opposite. I'm offended when proselytized to. I'm quite offended by your suggestion that because I do not call myself a Christian (or a Catholic) that I am somehow unimportant as a resistor of Islamo-facism.

I'm alarmed that you confuse Islam, which needs no "resurgance" and deserves no resistance, with Islamo-facism, a political movement. You seem, in a way, to be itching for a new Crusade and, hawk though I am, I for one won't have it.

You sound as though you feel embattled. You sound so to such an extreme degree I have to wonder if my leg isn't being pulled.

Regardless, I hope you take away that the real political world is a bit less cartoonish that you say. And, at least, I wanted to leave these thoughts to be part of "the record", such as it is.

Regards,
-t

[Emily]

Thanks for this entry-I feel like I never understand what's going on in this war-thanks for this informative entry.

[Joe]

Direct comment sent

[Carleton Lufteufel]

Jane's covers Iraqi "sophisticated infastructure attacks," AKA systems disruption:

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir051219_1_n.shtml

Who wants to bet that as regional confederations in the north and south of Iraq start to become empowered by their ability to keep oil revenues at the local level, systems disruption will become an even more important tool of the insurgency?