For every action there is an equal reaction.......

I've posted before that I believe Islam's biggest threat to us is through non violent jihad. They'll use our laws and ballot boxes against us. Our elites on both sides of the political aisle will continually harp on Islam's "peaceful" nature and lull too many of us to sleep. We'll wake up someday to find a Muslim upper class with special perks and priveleges, then we'll wonder how it happened.

But when I think that I'm thinking like the logical, rational American so many of us are. The truth is, folks like me might be whistling in the dark. Islam doesn't promote rational thinking, it doesn't promote logic. When the most successful and vocal proponents want to turn the clock back 1400 years it says something about their thought processes.

So reading this gives me a chill.

It's a given there are sleeper cells here. Look at our porous borders. Only an idiot would believe we haven't been infiltrated. Will those cells be activated and what would be the outcome?

IMHO there would be an initial attack that would make 9/11/2001 look like a minor event. NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) attacks all over our country. Then all Hell will break loose.

If they're irrational enough to do that they can't have really plumbed the depths of the American psyche. Their vision stops at our retreat from Viet Nam. It would assume we'd go belly up for them, back off from any further involvement in world affairs, lick our wounds and kowtow to the Islamists. I really believe that thinking would be a tremendous mistake.

Many historians have quoted Yamamoto saying Japan woke a sleeping giant with Pearl Harbor. An internal attack of the sort the writer of the above article envisions would have results dwarfing that.

I believe we'd go on the road to empire, not stopping after crushing the Islamists but continuing on till we completely dominated the world in all respects. It would border on facism perhaps but no one can stop us. No one.

When the Nazis were defeated who stopped us? No one but ourselves. Who stopped us in Korea? No one but ourselves. And in Viet Nam? We were our own enemy there.

We've never been fully roused. Let enough attacks happen on our schools, malls and churches, let there be scenes in the USA remeniscent of what happened in Beslan, let John Q. Public have our school buses blown apart as the Israelis have, and we may never go back to sleep.

And I wonder, what would be the unforseen consequences of THAT?

Maybe I sound like I'm licking my chops in anticipation of a coming PAX Americana. Nope. I'm worried about a possible loss of our soul.

One of the things that makes us who we are is the historical reluctance to glorify the military and it's use. It's a two sided issue, with Viet Nam vets being able to speak firsthand about the crappy side being given them. Even in the best of times our troops have detractors.

There's always been a reluctance to be a part of the military, even during times of conflict. The Revolutionary War had it's "summer soldiers", the Civil War had it's draft riots. As for peacetime, prior to WWII the funding for the Army was so limited riflemen could afford to shoot one practice round a month. In recent years many of us found out the meaning of "hollow military".

The positive side of that insures we've never indulged in conquest for it's own sake, like many powerful nations before us. Think of Rome, Great Britain, Spain, etc. All of them, once their nationalistic spirit was fully ignited, went out and ruled the known world. We've never done that.

(Disclaimer time. I'm sure there are a lot of holes in my theory. I'm NOT a historian, I'm a building engineer/retired turdchaser from the Navy. But from where I sit it makes sense).

We weren't any kind of world power prior to the 20th century. The closest we came to empire building was in the Spanish-American War when we gained the Phillipines. Even that had a fair amount of resistance on the homefront, read some of Mark Twain's writings of that time for proof. And he didn't live in a vacuum.

We had to be dragged into WWI kicking and yelling, got out of that ASAP. Were we even present at the Treaty of Versaille? WWII came along and got us going but even that didn't involve more than a few attacks on our homeland. It's easy to discount things when seen from a distance and most of WWII was seen from a distance. Had it not been for the Cold War we'd have pulled back completely afterwards. Korea was fought with our hands tied behind our backs, look at how General Douglas MacArthur was sacked for fighting it like a real war. Viet Nam was initially entered in a round about, half-hearted fashion in order to help out the French. No real enthusiasm there, as anyone who lived through it knows.

But a series of NBC attacks within our borders? Whole different ballgame. Think of the initial reaction to 9/11. Then multiply it by a factor of 50 or more. Because since 9/11, unlike WWII, we've learned that in many areas we're by ourselves. Our strongest allies have been England, Australia and Israel. Other than those countries, we're aware that no one is really looking out for us but ourselves. We've seen what a joke the UN has become (oil for food scandal, anyone?), France and many others cheerfully knife us in the back and the Islamofacists use every opportunity to demonize us.

IMHO we're half-cocked to the pissed off position from being spat upon and we're ready to rock and roll.

So yeah, if it came to pass I think the unintended consequence of activating sleeper cells within our nation would be like nothing seen before. Because we as a nation have never been fully focused on our own self-interest and advancement like we would be then. We always had allies in any international conflict, we always wanted to let the rest of the world do their thing and leave us the hell alone, while liking us. We've never really been burned. We're like the big dumb kid in the schoolyard who responds half-heartedly to the jibes and taunts of his much smaller classmates. The kid who only wants to get along. The kid who finally fires up one day and cleans house. Only on the day we do it there won't be any schoolyard monitors to intervene.

Just my opinion.