Samizdata

I was about to just add a comment, but I found myself with things to say that are better said up here on the front page.

Brian indicated my attitudes correctly. I certainly don’t wish things to go down the hell road… but they could. Many seem not to take into account the intensity of feelings amongst American citizens and the ways in which Americans as a people tend to react.

The first WTC bombing, the occasional blown up airliner, even the attack on the USS Cole were just the events of another Evening News. The USA is a huge country. Events of that size are unusual but not enought to impact the average person on a gut level.

The events of 9/11 were quite another matter. It got everyone’s attention. Everyone has friends, relatives, coworkers in New York City. The USA is a very mobile culture. Large parts of the population have worked or studied there at one time or another in their lives. The reaction, if you knew America and Americans was rather predictable: “We’ll find the bastards responsible and make them pay.” I know my business partner could vouch one of the first coherent things out of my mouth after the “OH MY GOD. ALL THOSE PEOPLE!!!” was about what we were going to do to bin Laden/Afghanistan and/or Saddam/Iraq. Others may not have been as familiar with the “intel” as I, but the gut reaction was repeated from one side of the planet to the other, wherever an American stood watching the live events.

The results after a little over one year is bin Laden/Afghanistan are down. He’s most likely roasting over a slow spit in some special deep hellpit along with his pilot friends and Saddam will be joining him shortly. It has been all very controlled and measured. Very careful to not cause too much harm to anyone’s sensibilities in Europe or elsewhere. Very controlled, very directed and undeflectable fury.

It should be quite noticeable the fury hasn’t cooled down very much in 12 months. Why? Because this is not a television media event, as much as media would like to move on to the Next Big Story. It’s real, and people do know the difference.

If someone were to be so foolish as to set off any “Weapon of Mass Destruction” (the weapons formerly known as NBC) the results will be different. If a nuke were to go off in San Franciso, or LA, or Detroit or where ever… the reaction would be extreme. Perhaps the government could restrain the populace and perhaps not. It would certainly risk not being re-elected if it didn’t do something very harsh. And if it happened more than once or if the death toll was in the millions as predicted for a worst-case Smallpox attack on an uninoculated populace… the reaction would be that of a berserker.

It would not be too extreme to say the results of such attack would be the use of methods similar to those of early Islam. Instead of “Convert or Die!” at sword point, it might well be the choice of “Change or die!” for the whole Arab world, guilty or not. And change they would. You don’t argue when 300 million heavily armed crazies are out for blood vengeance.

The lesson that must be drilled into any potential attacker out there is: the more of us you kill, the crazier and more violent we’ll get. If an attack passes some threshold of destruction on the continental USA the results will be exceedingly bad for children and other living things in the Middle East.

Look at pictures of Tokyo in 1945. That is the result of something done on American soil of similar scale (but not to civilians) to the WTC. You really don’t want to scale that up by a factor of a thousand. You really, really don’t.