to reemphasize from earlier this year………..
Attack and Defense
Thoughts on a 10/7 style attack on America
So I just finished Kurt Schlichter’s new novel, The Attack. It’s a fictionalized account of an October 7 style attack that takes place on a large scale in the United States. It’s also a warning.
In essence, Iranian terror experts use America’s open southern border to slip in thousands of Islamist fanatics, sleeper cells who are primed to attack specified targets on command. The terrorists don’t know their targets until the last minute, when they get guns, ammunition, and directions. They also don’t know that they’re part of a massive effort. This means that if they turn, or are caught, as a few do or are, they can’t give anything away. They have minimal training, basically how to lay low, and to shoot guns and throw grenades. They’re also equipped with web-linked cameras to stream their attacks, and the atrocities – rape, torture, etc. – that they perpetrate on their victims. Also meth to pump them up for the attacks.
When the day comes, they attack public places, schools, the Atlanta Zoo, and so on. The next day, with the overstretched police trying to protect public places and ordering people to shelter in their homes, they go after suburban neighborhoods, again placing torture, rape, and dismemberment videos online. On the third day, the remaining terrorists attack infrastructure targets – substation transformers, oil refineries, etc.
The result is a six-figure civilian casualty list, massive economic disruption, and political turmoil. The terrorists’ goal of cowing the United States into isolationism fails, however, in dramatic fashion. The entire novel is written as an oral history from numerous viewpoints, including the terrorists and their leftist American sympathizers.
It’s a gripping story, and an unfortunately plausible cautionary tale. How likely is it to happen?
Probably the biggest impediment to something like this happening in America is the aftermath of the 10/7 attacks on Israel. Atrocities didn’t cow the Israelis, but angered them. Other nations, even many of those that the Palestinians of Hamas generally looked to for support, turned against them. Hamas leaders are being targeted and killed, Hamas backers know they aren’t safe, and the Israelis simply continue to grind away, four months after the attacks happened.
And everyone knows that the consequences of an attack on the United States would likely be worse.
Or maybe not. Our current president is senile and inept, our vice president is just inept – though neither Kamala nor Biden is named in the book, Schlichter’s version of Harris’s response to the attacks is picture perfect, an incomprehensible word salad that causes Americans to lose faith in her entirely. The President and VP wind up being replaced by the unnamed Speaker of the House, who brings the hammer down. (I was at a luncheon Friday with Speaker Mike Johnson and didn’t get to speak to him – we had to leave early – but I was going to tell him that his role in the line of succession is probably more important for the remainder of this year than it usually would be. I did notice that there was a lot more security than I had seen at similar events in the past).
Okay, I said it was a cautionary tale, but once cautioned, what should we do?
Continue reading “”
