America was attacked today by terrorists with roots in state sponsored terrorism. The suicide attacks, using hijacked commercial airliners on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near the nation's capitol, represent the only 'external' threat to the existence of our nation as we know it.

       A book which I wrote in 1994 and plan to publish in 2002 describes three threats to America's survival in this modern age in which we are supposed to be 'the world's only superpower.' The first, and most potentially damaging threat is decay and disintegration from within -- a subject on which I have written extensively over the past six years. This threat is characterized by the culture war that arose from roots in the counter-culture revolution of the mid-1960s and 1970s. I have described the antagonists of that war in a book written in 1996, 'The New Totalitarians.' We have been divided along every aspect of our lives imaginable by those counter-culture revolutionaries of the '60s over the past thirty years. All for their own personal and political gain -- the grasp for power, raw absolute power. We have seen the result of that division over the past ten years as they came to power in every institution in the land. . Their most egregious act -- spawned by the hubris of their numbers and ideology -- was the 20 August 1998 bombing of Afghanistan and a chemical plant in the Sudan. Why?  To 'change the subject' when the impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives was not going their way. A summary of my book describing those 'enemies from within' can be found at the link, New Totalitarians. Make no mistake about it. These New Totalitarians will do everything in their power to use the 11 September attack by Islamic terrorists to weaken our new president's ability to counter the second threat, state sponsored terrorism. And to regain the pinnacle of power in America.

       The second threat to America's survival, and the most important immediate threat, is that of state sponsored terrorism. What was predicted has now come to pass on a large scale. But the 'state' which sponsors this terrorism is not just the states our government has identified and placed on a list of such states. The 'state' with which we are now at war has been identified by Philip Gold, a brilliant analyst of cultural affairs, who has presciently labeled it ('The War with Jihadistan,' The Washington Times, 9/12/01) Jihadistan. More about this appears below.

       The third threat to America's survival -- and this threat is more a threat to our remaining a 'superpower' in the eyes of our allies, trading partners, and friends around the world -- which I recognized and wrote about in 1994 -- is from China. China has essentially taken control of the Panama Canal, built a transshipment point and radar surveillance post in the Grand Bahamas, established trading transshipment points within the United States and took control of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. They are seeking hegemony over the shipping lines of communications of our Asian allies. They have over the past ten years or so prepared their people that we are the enemy with whom they are at war. The 'shooting part' of that war will be over our support and military protection of Taiwan. This threat does not imperil America's homeland except as its application will destroy our ability to 'project power' in Southeast Asia without being threatened by a nuclear attack on our homeland.

       Each of these threats to America's survival is interrelated in this complex nonlinear iterative feedback system which we call American civilization. Of course, such a system can be expected to exhibit chaotic behavior -- in the scientific sense of  Chaos Theory, the study of complex, self-organizing systems. You don't need to know much about that science to understand its reality. It is the science of complexity, of intricate sophisticated systems which become so specialized that each part depends upon the functioning of every other part. All of us know of and experience this phenomenon in our everyday lives. It is called the unintended consequences of actions that we and/or others take that impact our lives. Each and every one of us has experienced this in our own personal lives. And we recognize it at a surface level in the events that surround us.  More importantly, historians have told us that this phenomenon has resulted in the rise and fall of at least 16 or so civilizations before us in the history of man. Scientists at the Santa Fe Institute, headed by Murray Gel-Mann -- the scientist who won the Nobel Prize for predicting the existence of the quark, the tiny building block of protons and neutrons which comprise the nucleus of every atom -- have studied thousands of such systems, both physical and social. I study and write about the latter application of this science to our American civilization. To the extent possible, I will continue to report on the application of this science to the three threats, identified in 1994 and defined in this essay.

       For those of you with a 'scientific frame of mind,' the following books are recommended to understand Chaos Theory: "Chaos and Fractals: New Frontiers of Science," by Peitgen, Jurgens, and Saupe, Springer-Verlag, 1992 and "The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex," by Murray Gell-Mann, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1994. For those of you who do not want that level of understanding, don't worry. I will keep my descriptions in terms of the 'street smarts' language of a 'science of surprise,' of 'unintended consequences' of actions taken by individuals, political movements, and groups of individuals. We all know Chaos Theory -- it is and has been part of our lives since we were conceived. It is at work in the subject at hand.

       The threat of state sponsored terrorism has become real as of today (11 September 2001). It was presaged by the botched attempt to level one of the World Trade Center Twin Towers buildings by a car bomb planted in its basement parking structure in February 1993. It was further motivated by President Clinton's farcical cruise missile attack on Osama bin Laden's hiding place in Afghanistan and the Sudan chemical plant in 1998. His motives for this attack were purely for domestic political gain in his attempt to 'change the subject' in the minds of the American people during the latter stages of his impeachment by the House of Representatives.

       An account of the second threat, state sponsored terrorism, possibly in concert with elements of the first and most potentially damaging threat, decay from within, as I saw it emerging in 1994 is posted at the link What Was Apparent in 1994.

       Building on that foundation, the outline below describes the situation as of the 11 September attack on America.

• We are at war. It is a different kind of war than America has ever experienced. It is a war modeled on Sun-tzu's 'Art of War' dating from the last years of the sixth century and beginning about 512 B.C. Sun-tzu was the ancient Chinese military theorist whose text was first translated by a French missionary roughly two hundred years ago. It was reportedly studied and effectively employed by Napoleon and possibly by certain members of the Nazi High Command. For two thousand years it remained the most important military treatise in Asia, known at least by name even to the common people. Mao utilized this kind of warfare in his communist takeover of the Peoples Republic of China. Ho Chi Minh utilized Sun-tzu's methods against South Vietnam and the United States during all but the latter stages of the Vietnam War. One text that describes Sun-tzu's doctrine of guerilla and terrorist warfare is 'The Art of War,' Sun-tzu, new translation by Ralph D. Sawyer, Barnes & Noble, 1994.
  

• We are at war -- a different kind of war. More recently, the astute military historian, Martin Van Creveld, defined Nontrinitarian War, the type of war in which we are now embroiled. His seminal book, "The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz," The Free Press, 1991 is a masterpiece. His book sends us a message. "...contemporary 'strategic' thought about  [warfare that nation states face] is fundamentally flawed...is rooted in a 'Clausewitzian' world-picture that is either obsolete or wrong. We are entering an era, not of peaceful economic competition between trading blocks, but of warfare between ethnic and religious groups. Even as familiar forms of armed conflict are sinking into the dustbin of the past, radically new ones are raising their heads ready to take their place. Already today the military power fielded by the principal developed societies in both 'West' and 'East' is hardly relevant to the task at hand; in other words, it is more illusion than substance...Unless societies in question are willing to adjust both thought and action to the rapidly changing new realities, they are likely to reach the point where they will no longer be capable of employing organized violence at all. Once this situation comes about, their continued survival as cohesive political entities will also be put in doubt." There can be no more apt description of the kind of war -- nontrinitarian war -- in which we are now engaged.
  

• We are at war -- a different kind of war. Our nation's leaders are hell bent on defining this war as one against 'state sponsored' terrorism. This is because our nation's leaders are still in a mind set that has over the past decades identified states which have given support and abet the Islamic fundamentalists who have attacked us. We are being told that we will respond with military force against those states which evidence reveals have aided in the specific attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This is a mistake. It is also a mistake to 'personalize' the enemy in the name of one or more terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. President Clinton was the first to do this (for personal and political gain). It was then and it is now a mistake to do this. We must take forceful actions against those who planned, organized, and carried out the attack on America. We must punish those nations who aided and abetted the attack on America. Incidentally, if we are serious about taking such action, we would have to 'bomb' certain parts of America. Why?  Because we trained some of those terrorists to fly jet aircraft such as those they used to carry out their attacks. They even lived among us as 'neighbors.' As Sun-tzu has said, "The terrorist swims in the vast sea" of the diaspora of the population (in this case Moslems) which give them cover. Pressuring and possibly attacking these identified states who 'sponsor' terrorism is not enough. It would be a tragic mistake to attack any one of these states in a 'symbolic' military retaliation. That would not come close to solve the problem. The 'state' with which we are now at war is not just Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, etc. We are at war with Jihadistan.
  

• We are at war -- with Jihadistan. This 'state' is one without a geographic boundary. It is amorphous entity, highly dispersed over the world (including in the United States of America), comprised of groups of individuals and compartmentalized 'cells,' which are impossible to identify and monitor with our current intelligence assets. They are semi-independent groups who attach themselves like a virus to nations which 'aid and abet' their terrorist activities. Jihadistan is a 'state' without a nation. It has no center of gravity which can be attacked by traditional military forces -- the kinds of forces which we (and the rest of the West) have available in sufficient quantity. A brilliant description of what is required to fight this kind of war is an 'intelligence report' posted at the link: No Easy Battle.
  

• We are at war. The 11 September attack on America is NOT a judicial matter. It must NOT be handled by the justice department. We should NOT, as the Secretary of State has publicly declared, 'bring to justice' the attackers and their supporters, individual or states. This is not a civil rights matter. This is not a criminal matter. This is WAR. This is a matter of our national security. This is a matter of protecting and defending the Constitution. This is a matter for our National Command Authority --  and our national security apparatus.