It Can't Happen Here

Nihilists & the like will enjoy this (if they haven't already) from 2005 in The Atlantic.

A leading expert on counterterrorism imagines the future history of the war on terror. A frightening picture of a country still at war in 2011

2011, 2013, whatever. Is there any difference? Can't name one, can you? It just gets smearier as time blurs along. (Starting to agree w/ the "all time is all happening all at once" theory. The dullness is so equal & universal at all possible times & places that one can dip into existence anywhere & not be able to determine the decade, let alone yrs. & months. But enough philosophical digression.)

The future history timeline is off a bit, the piece is long & depressing, but the scenarios for low-budget terrorism are entirely plausible, so it seems obligatory to drag it out following the atrocities & horror in Nairobi. Does anyone believe these United Snakes are any better prepared for mall attacks & so on than in 2005? Here "leading expert" Richard A. Clarke imagines an attack on a fictional Mall of America:

The 4.2-million-square-foot mall, located in Minnesota, was globally recognized as the largest entertainment and retail complex in America, welcoming more than 42 million visitors each year, or 117,000 a day. On this day neither the 160 security cameras surveying the mall nor the 150 safety officers guarding it were able to detect, deter, or defend against the terrorists. Four men, disguised as private mall-security officers and armed with TEC-9 submachine guns, street-sweeper 12-gauge shotguns, and dynamite, entered the mall at two points and began executing shoppers at will.

[...]

The panic and confusion brought on by the terrorists' opening volleys led many shoppers to run away from one pair of murderers and into the path of the other, leading to more carnage. Two off-duty police officers were cited for bravery after they took down one pair of terrorists with their personal weapons, before the local SWAT team could get to the scene. Meanwhile, one of the other terrorists used his cell phone to remotely detonate the rental van he had driven to the mall; this resulted in even more chaos in the parking garages. Once the SWAT team arrived, it made short work of the two remaining terrorists. By the time the smoke had cleared, more than 300 people were dead and 400 lay wounded. In the confusion of the firefight the SWAT team had killed six mall guards and wounded two police officers.

At the same moment, at the Tower Place, in Chicago; the Crystal Place, in Dallas; the Rappamassis Mall, in Virginia; and the Beverly Forest Mall, in Los Angeles, the scene was much the same: four shooters and hundreds of dead shoppers. America's holiday mall shopping effectively ended that day, as customers retreated to the safety of online retail.

We're never going to a mall again. We may start iNternet grocery shopping too.

S'pose the terrorists are waiting until the gov't. shutdown? Or does the national security state even enter into the calculations of those who would kill us for our freedoms? Or for their freedom.