Response to a 'Brave New World'

The fabled civil war in Iraq is happening after all, but who have guessed that it would be for the hearts and minds of the insurgency itself.

"We've been scared for a long time," Ali said. "We've had enough." This statement rings prophetic.

The advent of nuclear arms was to change the way wars are waged, keeping the superpowers at a stalemate, while proxies socked it out in regional low intensity conflicts.
The clash of the titans would give birth to two very different offspring. The two edges of the sword are intelligence and operations. A personal, in your face insurgency that was best countered with soldiers with intimate knowledge of the local customs and knew it’s leaders, soldiers who’d, when push come to shove, knock your door down and drag you out to the streets into an interrogation room. And an all-together different, death from above capability, semi-autonomous air vehicles that could fire volleys of precision guided munitions whilst its’ controllers were hundreds of miles away in an air conditioned bunker. This later development has in a sense obviated the notion of borders. In fact the ‘air-mobility’ tactics first developed in Viet Nam have evolved to such an extent that US war fighting doctrine prefers a smaller operating footprint in the face of conventional set piece warfare as has been evidenced by OIF. Predators scored their first kills in engagements in Yemen, Afghanistan, and not unlikely Pakistan. It seems evident that the future will bring more of the same, and inevitably, space borne weapons platforms that can rain hell fire upon any point on the globe will be deployed.

The schism that drove H.G .Wells Morlocs underground has found imitation in life as the VC tunnels, the Talibans’ caves, and Iran’s subterranean nuclear complex. It is the cries of the pacifists that will ensure a more frightening future of warfare. The days of detent, Mutually Assured Destruction, and walking softly and carrying a big stick are over. And so it goes, the future of warfare is not only the outer space, but the inner space of the mind.

It is because of the melt down of the alliances of the liberal west that we shall see a world in greater turmoil. We see more death and destruction, and we will see it because we have valued peace more than justice, that we value the life of our adversaries more than they value their own, and finally, we will have a global war because our allies that we have invested so much to be with us, wish more than their own survival, our comeuppance. This will be the basis of the ever broadening pool of blood, the red on blue war fought across the Rubicon of the corpus colosum.