Many veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and other such wars, likely view this news cycle through a different glass.
Using Iraq as example, after things truly began to spin out of control in 2004, many people were fighting for vastly different reasons. The situation was difficult to track even for dedicated analysts. Just who was fighting whom, and for what reasons, often was a great mystery even to our intelligence people.
Amid the chaos of unstructured conflict and war, the always-there lunatic fringe is uncorked. Suddenly the actions of a serial killer look like the work of an insurgent or group. Criminality skyrockets, and what would earlier have been seen as just a bank robbery looks like part of a movement.
Groups or individuals who are honestly fighting for some cause — not just angry, or lunatics, or criminals unleashed — can have many separate goals. These goals often will be in opposition to one another.
They will simultaneously fight the government while fighting each other. They inevitably have internal disputes that often lead to Group A killing other members of Group A, and then Group A splits into Groups B and C. Before long, there are dozens of organizations, or even more.
The headless bodies found in the road during a morning patrol might be al Qaeda killed by other al Qaeda, or Badr Brigade terrorists killed by Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah, or the product of a local who killed his neighbors because the voices in his head said to do it.
Unless they are caught with a gun in their hands, most fatalities are listed on the big board under civilian casualties. In America, no doubt many “combatants” would be local or national gangs carving out or protecting their fiefdoms for drugs and prostitution. During the fog of it all, any gangsters and cops they kill get added to the war tally.
Wars allow criminals and the insane to fulfill their full their vast potential.
Some people just like to fight. Fighting is their cause, and they will latch onto any cause if it helps them get ammo. Young men with guns, no rules, and a sense of divine authority, are the most dangerous animals on earth.
In Iraq was/is various tribes fighting on tribal lines. Others fight on sectarian lines, or ethnic such as Kurds vs. Arabs. National players such as Iranians and Americans interfere for their/our own causes.
There were so many insurgent groups and goals that they were impossible for normal people to track. Often they were local groups operating only in small areas. They could pop up almost overnight, often based on some cult-inspiring personality such as Zarqawi.
In the U.S., this could translate into the normal unleashing of the insane, of the criminal elements, and people who are merely fighting “the man,” ethnic divides of many sorts — white and black is only a subset — religious, and other motivations ranging from environmental terrorism, anti-globalism, save the dolphins, save the whales, pro-life, anti-Semitism, and endless sorts of backwater motivations that become wrapped in violence.
All this white noise is perfect breeding ground for militant Islam, and anti-Islamic violence also no doubt would raise its head.
Nobody knows where this will go.
This could quiet down from here and we move on, or we might sink lower into a spiral of violence.
If violence increases to high levels, National Guard will not save the cities. They will be pop up targets. And every time they (are perceived to) overreact, they fertilize opposition.
Law Enforcement and the government ultimately do not control the people. Control is an illusion. The mahout does not control the elephant. When the elephant loses his mind, the mahout gets flattened.
Millions of people around America are upset and often for different reasons. In many cases, they share a vision that justice no longer exists in the United States, or has been so undermined that they no longer respect it.
The BLM movement has its own agenda and, though not baseless, is itself on the verge of terrorism. Meanwhile, a completely different sort of people see the FBI as a puppet for the Clintons and other “elites” who are not just above the law, they are the law.
The biggest problem at hand is straightforward: millions of Americans see injustice, and disrespect for the population, coming from the government.
Different sorts of people arrive at this conclusion from different roads. BLM comes at it from a racist agenda while others are tired of seeing the .1% sailing above the laws that are made for the 99.9%.
At this time, the government must not overreact and draw more violent opposition. The stakes could not be higher.