Surprises

The empire of Japan achieved a stunning tactical victory when it snuck a half-dozen aircraft carriers across the Pacific in early December 1941. On the bright Sunday morning that was December 7, waves of planes attacked American ships and sailors in Pearl Harbor. Wielding bombs and air-launched torpedoes, Mitsubishi Zeroes left the pride of the American Pacific fleet as smoking hulks. Japan had gained unchallenged control of the western Pacific. 

For about 6 months. 

It was in May 1942 that the Battle of Midway revealed that the Americans had quickly learned the importance of air power. (The ability to crack Japan's  cryptography was also very helpful.) The victory there showed that the United States was going to fight back forcefully in response to the Day of Infamy. It took almost three more years of fierce fighting to move across other Pacific islands, but that December morning had given Americans all the incentive they needed. Soon, bombers were able to reach from American bases there to the Japanese home islands.

On July 16, 1945, the Trinity test confirmed the ability to trigger an atomic explosion using plutonium, in a weapon nicknamed "Fat Man". That same day, the USS Indianapolis departed San. Francisco with the "Little Boy" uranium device. It would arrive at Tinian ten days later. Only a week and a half passed before the Little Boy was loaded onto the Enola Gay and dropped upon Hiroshima. Three days after that, on August 9, a Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki.

On August 15, less than a week later, Japan announced that it would be surrendering. Less than a month after the Trinity test, the war was over. The United States had achieved a surprise victory, one that avoided the need for a full invasion of the Japanese home islands which would likely have resulted in millions of American and Japanese casualties. 

The unexpected power vacuum was noticed quickly in a little-remarked area of Southeast Asia. After Japan's announcement of surrender, revolutionary forces immediately took control of Vietnam. In the North, anyway - Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh were unable to do the same in the more diverse South of the country before Allied troops took over a month later. The division between north and south accentuated by the sudden changes would lead to nearly thirty years of war involving the French and, later, the United States. 

Great tactical successes may require surprise. They can also change power structures and invite a disproportionate response. Someone who has enjoyed an unexpected victory, however well-deserved, may want to keep this in mind. 

Crisis, Cloverfield, Et Cetera

Another little while since trying this.

Crisis: Problems in Michigan cities, warning of a Fiscal Crisis, Weapons of Math Destruction about the once and future financial crisis, and opioids in Ontario

Apocalypse: A few Trump == Apocalypse items, go figure.

Collapse: South China Sea fishery - which references the Chinese claims to an extraordinary area, one that could turn into a shooting war, eventually. Although less so if the fish are all gone, no doubt.

Cloverfield: Okay, so in part the recent news about closing Santa Monica airport is what jogged the memory of this anyway,but 10 Cloverfield Lane was released on DVD a few weeks ago.

A bit more diverse results than previous searches for these sorts of indicators. Maybe it means something, maybe not.

A Moment of Clarity

Today's problems won't be solved by looking to the past.

Reading through recent proposals of various sorts, including but not exclusively the Better Way proposed by Republican legislators, this truth has become clearer and clearer.

It's not that there's anything egregiously wrong with the ideas there. They are, however, more of the same, at least for Republicans: Smaller government, less regulation, lower taxes. If there was a counter from the other side of the aisle, it would likely be more of their same as well. Or looking at different problems in their same way: more gun control, more unions, more government to resolve any issue. It's not like those have worked so far, either. At this point, every ordinary way to fix what's wrong - whatever you think is wrong - has been proposed, debated, exaggerated, sometimes implemented, usually ignored.

Soon, a moment of clarity will occur. It always does.

Everyone will realize that there's not an alternate interpretation of the Constitution that will fix it all. Congress won't pass some law that will resolve all major problems to everyone's satisfaction. The next president won't magically realize how to convince the nation to enact policies that have been previously proposed over and over again.

We the people probably know the answer already, a certainty that we each hold onto, nursing quietly, acknowledging the difficulty, the problems we will have to endure, that personal disagreement - perhaps with some minor part - that keeps us from shouting out what should be done. 

In the early 1770s, options for taxation of the American colonies based on their representation in Parliament were brought up, debated, considered, sometimes approved, mostly ignored.

In the 1850s, there were multiple changes in how slavery was treated, sometimes in favor of the practice, sometimes not. Most of them satisfied few and antagonized everyone else, until the only solution was a war that effectively decided that slavery would no longer exist in the United States of America.

Today, different parts of the political spectrum propose what they consider appropriate ways to handle the economy, the role of government, the need for the populace to protect itself against the government, how the economy should work for the people, when the people should support the government...or not. Even if this isn't a problem that's well defined, it's clearly the case that a significant portion of the American people do not believe their government is helping them.

It's not relevant that the distrust of government is for different reasons, even antithetical ones. Trump supporters blame the Democrats, the elite, and immigrants. Sanders supporters blame the Republicans, the 1%, and banks. This fundamental distrust of existing institutions will eventually make it clear that the only resolution will come not from evolution, but from revolution - from a major change, not an incremental one.

There isn't a way out that will be painless, or perfect. What might have been proposed in the last year, decade, or half-century has already been debated endlessly.  If it's helpful there's no agreement; if there's agreement, it has downsides; if it's perfectly safe, it doesn't resolve anything.

This inability to do anything will end the only way it can. At some point, the standard options that have been chewed up and spat out will give way to options that are new, unexpected, creative - dangerous - not standard at all. No more than it was a standard option to replace a British (but Catholic) king with a Dutch (but Protestant) one. Nor to say "we are leaving, you can't stop us, if you try it's war."   Nor to fight people who had been countrymen a few short months before.

Whatever this solution might be, there will be those who oppose it. There will be others who think it won't go far enough. When it is over, some will think the battle must continue. At the end, the predominant attitude may be relief that it has passed. 

It might turn out that some of today's concerns are a distraction, a minor discomfort, a sign/portent that's not close to the real problem. A few people killed during civil unrest, environmental issues, overreaching by the head of state - important to understanding the problem, if you look at it with the right sort of squint, but not the source nor target of solutions. 

And of course, a moment's thought brings a reminder that this has all been said before, and surely will be said again. 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

A Fourth Turning is a point where there are no solutions available through appeals to history. Considering what They meant by how They set up the system will not help - whether that system was set up ten, twenty, one hundred, or five hundred years ago. Finding a solution will be the responsibility of today's living generations.

That's you and me.

Cultivate Patience and Keep Your Hands Clean

In this election year which feels too much like 1860, an obscure quote by Winston Churchill comes to mind. It's from page 91 of a 1961 book called "Official Secret." The author, Clayton Hutton, had worked for the Britsh military during World War II, creating equipment like silk maps, tiny compasses, and survival kits. With them, surviving crew members of shot-down aircraft could evade the enemy, and prisoners of war (POWs) could attempt escape and return to areas under Allied control. 

Although Churchill's name is not mentioned,  the allusions to the highest possible authority being a "cigar-smoking" "elderly gentleman" are clear enough. The meeting came about when Hutton had to justify having Red Cross parcels in his office. In his book he insists that he was only investigating their contents, not thinking of incorporating his escape tools into them. Including military supplies in Red Cross packages would have contravened the Geneva Conventions, and would also have risked having those parcels and others withheld from the POWs. He eventually used other channels to sneak in his inventions, such as "donations" to POW camps of unused books - which happened to have maps and currency hidden in their covers. 

Upon hearing Hutton's confirmation that his work had been legitimate, Churchill goes on to give a description of the planning for  the war:

Always remember that at the end of this war we want to be in a position to say that we fought and won it fairly. I think you’re trying to go much too quickly. Reconcile yourself to the fact that it takes us four years to attain victory. In the first year we have to sell the war to the public; in the second we are busy jiggering and tooling for the latest weapons; in the third supplies come pouring in; and in the fourth we press buttons everywhere and the enemy has a most unpleasant time. So cultivate patience and - keep your hands clean.

Which is quite good advice in general, and particularly here as we approach the peak of this Crisis.

Crisis, Collapse, and Cloverfield

A lot of changes and new items since I last tried this:

Crisis: Refugee crisis in Europe continues. Pope Francis calls the U.S.-Mexican border a "humanitarian crisis." The water problem in Flint, Michigan shows up, too.

Apocalypse: More X-Men: Apocalypse, naturally, but particularly because Deadpool did so well last weekend that it's raising comparisons and one-up attempts. There's a show called "You, Me, and the Apocalypse" on NBC - but probably for not much longer. And Amazon included a zombie apocalypse opt-out clause in a terms of service agreement.

Collapse: After an uninteresting first page, there are stories about the collapse of Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Ukraine's coalition government.

Cloverfield: Everything is about 10 Cloverfield Lane, a sequel (of sorts) to the monster-takes-Manhattan original.

The Two Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Every 80 to 100 years, people look around and agree that whatever it is society is up to, it is no longer working. 

1933 - The Securities Act of 1933 

That doesn't mean that everyone agrees on the solution, just that it's time to find one. 

1861 - The Secession Winter 

It may require a statement of purpose, and the powers that be may have their own ideas about how to respond to that. 

1779 - The Spanish in the Revolutionary War 

It may result in a change that seems odd and unexpected in a did-they-really-do-that way. 

1688 - The Glorious Revolution 

It can easily end up as a total war, one that changes who are the players of the game, or even how the  game itself is played

1588 - The Defeat of the Spanish Armada. 

Apocalypse, sayeth Wikipedia, is an unveiling, a revelation, a gain of new knowledge. It has taken on its meaning of The End Times because of its association with The Revelation of St. John the Divine, which prophesies the new Kingdom of Heaven, and the tribulations which lead up to it.

I don't think Trump is War. I don't think Sanders is Famine. I don't think either is Death or Pestilence.  They are loose about the land, though, and they are speaking to a belief that This Isn't Working. Sanders blames the banks and the 1%, and the government that has allowed them to do what they wish. Trump blames immigrants and ISIS, and the government that has allowed them to do what they wish. There is a connection here, and it's one that can be seen in the financial crisis, in the years leading to the financial crisis, in the response to Katrina, even in 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq: The government isn't doing what it should, what it is supposed to. We aren't even sure what it is supposed to do, anymore.

The American people supporting Trump and Sanders - and for that matter Cruz and Clinton - have all had a few months of schooling on Your Government and How It Works. Yet they have completely different ideas of what government should do. Whatever issues their proposed policies might have, though, both Trump and Sanders are espousing the idea that the government should do what the people want it to do. They are seen as proposing new solutions, not the status quo.

And that's why Bernie and Donald are both harbingers of a time, coming soon, when we are going to have to seriously agree to seriously disagree. People are ready to start choosing between bad alternatives - and between good ones as well. Want small government, expect an end to Too Big to Fail. Want free child care, expect liver wurst on rye. You can have a car with two doors, or with four doors, but not both at once.

Prepare to choose.

Crisis Resurgent

This is about the Crisis. Nothing more nor less.

I was looking forward to an observation about the Regeneracy, which is a proposed mechanism in the generational model for how people start to take control of the Crisis period. The thought was that decisions in renewable energy - electric cars and solar on rooftops - indicated that we were no longer interested in solutions to terrorism that required violence.

And then Paris happened.

I've waited a day to write, and a day to post, and then another day to consider some more. I'm going to do my best not to make policy recommendations, or to blame, or to suggest that If Only X Then Not Paris. Not that it has really helped.

There are a limited number of reactions, to the current situation in Europe - and, if you like, the world.

A.We can accept that asymmetric warfare is a fact of life, that it's too clear that a single person can have an extreme impact, and therefore that every few years a dozen or a hundred or so will die for political causes. We will expect our government forces at all levels to do what they can to reduce such, but accept that they won't eliminate them. And if that means increased surveillance and drone strikes and  low-level combat, so it goes.

B. We can let other countries handle their own problems, and accept that they may have honor killings, destroy important cultural artifacts, and generally be unpleasant to the locals, potentially resulting in massive emigrations. We keep our nose out of such problems, and when someone points out that life sucks in Xlanistan, we can point to the results of these last 15 years for why we aren't going to do anything about it.

C. We can hold state or non-state actors responsible for actions they take responsibility for. If destroying them means destroying the other 90% of the country they currently occupy, then that's an unfortunate but unavoidable fact. Ignoring the Nazis for several years didn't bring World War II to a close any faster. We would have to mobilize in a real way to bring the problem to a resolution. While air strikes might be a part, boots on the ground, and lots of them, would have to be the goal, from the start and to the end.

Option A is the status quo, where we are now.  It's a pragmatic option, although it does imply ubiquitous government involvement in your life. You may need to send some of your offspring into harm's way, and/or they will be at risk of being in the dozen or hundred who die on occasion.

Option B should appeal if you like your own freedom and don't expect you can help with anyone else.  And it's really what we've done with problems in sub-Saharan Africa: Endless bloodshed and child armies? Make blood diamonds a thing and then ...  and people will forget about the rest. The idea that we can starve the beast by using renewable energy (i.e. not oil) supports this one. Although if we reduce the money flowing into the Middle East significantly, short-term disruptions might make the problems worse for a while. And it doesn't help with the emigration problem.

Option C, though, feels like the way things are headed. It may not occur without a really massive attack, and some will certainly say, like Pearl Harbor, such an attack could be a false flag in some way. Daesh is managing to push too many buttons, finding ways to make liberals and conservatives unhappy, that it will have to happen.

(Which seems so obvious, that couldn't there be a reason they are doing it? Do they believe that chaos is in their best interest? Attacks on the Muslim world getting Pakistan's nukes on the market, perhaps?)

Concerning which, notes of the sort "Where's the outrage on Lebanon/Baghdad/Kenya/Nasty Incident in Country Z" implicitly support Option C. If France is attacked because they are in Syria, then France can decide on a response. If everyone is being attacked everywhere, then it would seem a more unified resolution is called for. The clearer it becomes that this is a worldwide problem, the more it will require a forceful unified solution.

Not that I like the idea. It would mean, as David Kaiser noted, that the Crisis isn't going in a direction any of us might prefer. And it seems like what will happen next.

In 1991, Generations predicted that we would be in a Crisis period by now, and that the peak would start in 2020. That was a distant future date at the time, but is only half a decade away now. And a lot can happen in five years - I was thinking today how Pearl Harbor was only five years after Jesse Owens appeared in the Olympics in Berlin. Don't see how any of the options get better any time soon. 

Today in Crisis

Haven't done this in a while:

Crisis: Something new since last time: The migrant crisis in Europe, as Syrians attempt to leave their country and go anywhere that isn't torn apart by, well, by the kind of mess that Syria is right now.

Collapse:Not much, actually - some structural failures of various sorts, including one that killed a man who had noted safety issues at his worksite. Also, the president of France note the danger of a "collapse" of the Schengen border area because of the migrant crisis.

Apocalypse: Mostly about the upcoming X-Men movie, still. Although one story about how a meteor over Thailand brought fears of an "asteroid apocalypse."

Cloverfield: Nothing, really - a recent story from someone who liked the movie.

Maybe things are a little better. For a little while.

The Next Day

September 3, 1945, was a Monday - Labor Day, in fact. Japan's surrender had been signed the previous morning, and it was the first day of the post-World War II era.

Eleanor Roosevelt's daily article was about Labor Day. Not too surprising: she certainly had written many things ahead of time and it was probably not worthwhile to swap them out.  It doesn't mention the surrender of Japan or atomic bombs or anything about the war - perhaps, if you like, the tone suggests that she knew it would be over shortly

Trinity had been on Monday as well, exactly 7 weeks earlier - 49 days from that to the day after the end of the war. A lot had happened even in that short period of less than two months. It can be helpful to consider history in these smaller pieces, to realize how short or long some periods of time really are. They can make momentous events that much more comprehensible. 

George Orwell reviews Mein Kampf

Found on Twitter: Cory Doctorow posted a review of Mein Kampf by George Orwell. The date is given as March 1940 - which is to say, about six months after the invasion of Poland,  perhaps two before the invasion of France, during a period called the "Phoney War." While Hitler is recognized as the enemy of Britain, the review is almost matter-of-fact in tone, even when describing how Hitler's plans and philosophy appealed to the millions of (formerly) unemployed Germans.

For the purpose here, though, what's unexpected is how current it sounds. For example:

The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. 

Or perhaps this assessment of the gap between progressive goals and human reality:

... [human beings] also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. 

Other similarities are left as an exercise for the reader. Even if we aren't quite there yet, echoes are in the wind.

Capitol Investment

Here's a picture of the U.S. Capitol dome currently:

Here's one from 1861 - Lincoln's inauguration in March:

Crisis is a time for investment of all sorts, a time to repair and handle problems long put off. And here it is again.  Evidently there has been some significant damage to the dome since the last major restoration 55 years ago.

Although you have to think that the South should have seen that - a major addition to the existing government buildings for aesthetic reasons despite the pending conflict - and reconsidered secession...

Happyish Curmudgeons

I'm working on a separate blog with a goal to focus on stories - film, television, literature - and how it changes through the Saeculum.  And as such, this article about a new series, Happyish, would be a great fit with it. However, it kept hitting so many Crisis touchpoints that it seems worthwhile to list them here, anyway:

• "A curmudgeon creates a curmudgeon" and Xers are the new curmudgeons, like other Reactive/Nomad generations.
• The idea that the change to this current turning is very much starting to creep into how people view the world, as the lead character tries to understand his Millennial co-workers and their different perspectives on life.
• The character's name is Thom Payne, and references to Common Sense are called out in the article and presumably on the show as well.
• The ads juxtapose a standard-for-advertising happy family with a mushroom cloud. And really, isn't that how life feels right now?

Unfortunately, initial critical response appears to be negative.

The First Clash

Finished reading The First Clash by Jim Lacey today, a history of the battle of Marathon. As the author notes early on, people know Thermopylae better lately because of the movie 300...and maybe because 300 vs. 300,000 is cooler than 10000 vs. 60000. (Rough numbers, all around - I don't feel the need to get exact about them, since for every one - except the 300 Spartans - nobody else seems 100% sure either.)

He makes the good point that, without Marathon, Thermopylae wouldn't have happened. Athens gets taken over, all the other city-states submit to Persia, Sparta holds out for a while... but the best case there is a glorious but decisive defeat. By showing that the Persians were not invincible - not by a long shot - the Greeks had some expectation that a battle held the possibility of victory.

This appears, of course, to be a Crisis period, at least for the Greeks. It's not clear whether Thermopylae 10 years later is the final culmination of the Crisis, or if it was a relatively minor issue
 to the Greeks, so indicating that this was more of a First Turning war than a Peak Crisis one.  At the least, though, Lacey refers to the men at Marathon as a "Greatest Generation" indicating that, whatever side of the Crisis they were on, those who were there were the Heroes of their day.

1973, Then and Now

Opinion piece in the Times this week about ending the abortion wars.

It's an opinion piece, of course, so it naturally supports the points its trying to make. And for that matter, it's of interest here because it supports the points made here: As the Crisis takes hold, and the Hero generation becomes dominant, fights over moral issues like abortion stop being the most important political question. And nobody is likely to miss them.

When setting up The Grid, 1973 was a very tempting year to consider for the latest Awakening, specifically for Roe v. Wade. It's a line drawn with words, a battle between ideas. memorable, significant, with two sides who are both always absolutely certain that their side was the only right one. That it had a hefty religious and spiritual component is overkill.

And it may, eventually, be incomprehensible as well. Why that case and this cause was the major one of the last 40 years could be as difficult for schoolchildren to understand as Henry's motivations or the goals of the Free Silver movement.

The Old-Fashioned Way to Mess with Putin

A Slate article on U.S. strategy for Ukraine caught my interest in part because it includes a fundamental point from my original Crimea post: There are no U.S. vital interests in Ukraine that justify the risk of a shooting war with Russia.

Beyond my point about it not likely the main Crisis hotspot, Fred Kaplan suggests that the best victory there is helping Kiev win economically. Support their economy, make them more successful than Russia, and then ... actually, it's not clear what then, except that Putin wouldn't like it. Although it wouldn't be as easy to say the country is a Western puppet if the main support is Apple computers - much less affordable in Russia anymore - rather than Boeing munitions.

The extra fun part of that, of course, is the replay of the Reagan Cold War strategy, this time against Russia rather than the USSR: Make them see that their way leads to a crappy life, and they'll give it up on their own. It's like the fable of the sun and the wind, who had a bet to see who could get a man's coat off. The more the wind blew, the harder the man held on; when the sun shone, he took it off himself.

If we're going to get involved, we should aspire to be like the sun.

A Quick Thought on ISIS

There are people around talking about how Chamberlain is agonizing again, knowing from his current vantage that we are re-making his mistake.

I'd say, though, that this doesn't feel like Munich. There's no appeasement - indeed, anything that ISIS does seems to make their situation worse. The United States staying out of it is a matter of realpolitik,  not cowardice or misguided optimism.

There is a resemblance, though, to Bleeding Kansas - well-meaning changes in the political situation causing law and order to take a quick downward slope. Evidently skirmishes continued in the area until the Civil War started. Which doesn't mean they stopped, then, just that they were less significant by comparison.

If that is the appropriate analogy, what's next? We can expect ongoing fighting in area, until the decision comes to make these "skirmishes" irrelevant.  Unless it turns out this was never the real battlefield for the United States at all, and the REAL Crisis will come from a different direction. Which seems quite possible.

Pick Your Crisis

Here at the end of January, there is no end to the available Crisis stories:

• Russia has its ongoing economic Crisis
• Ukraine has its ongoing Russian Crisis
• Greece has initiated a Crisis for the European Union by electing a "radical left" party with a platform of not continuing with austerity measures originally intended to rebuild the economy.  And this is not intended as a smear: SYRIZA contains former elements of the Greek Communist Party,along with other parties like International Workers that appear communist in all but name, while using red as a main color in their presentations and rallies, so it shouldn't be controversial to say that they really are Communists. 
  
• As far as oil producers are concerned, the steep drop continues to be a Crisis, as well.
• Japan has a hostage crisis, too.

Hardly have to look up anything else. Although there is an anti-Keurig campaign that's done a promotional video based on Cloverfield.

Oh What The Heck - Today in ....

Apocalypse: X-Men, again - without Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen, though. Sigh.

Cloverfield: American Sniper beat its January opening.

Crisis: Some concern over a new European currency crisis. And the Russian economy, too, of course.

Collapse: I-75 overpass collapse. And, well, yeah, the Packers.

Anonymous vs. the Attackers of Charlie Hebdo

A few years ago the Anonymous hackers collective announced it would be taking on the notorious Zetas cartel in Mexico. A member had been kidnapped, and in response dissemination of information about the criminal organization was planned for release. This did lead to the Zetas letting the kidnap victim go, but the Zetas promised retribution if there was a release, said retribution aimed at the victim's family.  Others simply considered Anonymous as overreaching and risking violent bloody death for something that would make no difference at all to the Zetas.

With this as background, the possibility that Anonymous might really do something about Islamic State or Al-Qaeda seems similarly ill-conceived. On further reflection, though, it might be a better match than initially perceived. While this might not be anything like the organizational analysis that might truly be needed, it goes to the differences between

• A state organization, i.e. a government, with defensive and offensive capabilities aimed at protection of the members of the state and pursuit of their common goals.
• A criminal organization based on a profit motive.
• A terrorist organization with ideological goals (which may be based on religious thought)
• Whatever organizational type one might assign to Anonymous, although their goals are ultimately ideological in scope.

To start, though, there's an important distinction already: The Zetas had an exploitable connection to Anonymous, namely the previously kidnapped member. Conversely, the reason Anonymous considered taking action was because of the kidnapping. This naturally weakens the anonymity that the group depends on. It would be like Batman starting his crime-fighting career by saying he was avenging the Waynes: It's too much of a clue to toss out there at the start. If, instead, information had appeared in public places with only a Guy Fawkes mask to show where it came from - and no connection to anyone - it might have been an effective method to weaken the cartel.

Although at least one commentator noted that the government is completely owned by the cartel, so releasing the info would do nothing helpful at all. Open source intelligence group Stratfor finishes their assessment with

Being identified and detained by Scotland Yard or the FBI is a far different situation than being identified and detained by Los Zetas.

In any case, without a focused assault on key nodes of infrastructure, you can't hope to eliminate all of them - and it only takes the attention of a few organized criminals to have the attention of them all. That is an advantage of having a hierarchical organization with well-defined and concrete goals: Someone starts messing around, all resources can be focused in that direction, and the only justification needed to do so is "are our goals in jeopardy." Anonymous depends on people using their computers to support the operations they want to support. They would not be able to apply sufficient force to the Zetas, because the methods of attack are too diffuse to affect the cartel's concrete goals of making money and acquiring power. While there is an advantage to anonymity, it's not clear that it makes any difference to this inherent imbalance.

But attacking Al-Qaeda in this way might work. Al-Qaeda has a de-centralized structure as well,  and could be said to lack key nodes - a successful attack on one node will normally have no effect on the overall organization. Any impact requires eliminating enough individual notes to degrade communication, operational effectiveness, etc.  Which means the winner will be the side that can eliminate nodes more effectively, by having more people and/or better skills. That could be Anonymous.

("Hey - Al-Qaeda has used diffuse tactics against the United States successfully!" Yes, but not against concrete goals of the United States.  "Money and power" can be broken down specifically for a criminal organization, since the goals are related directly to its leaders, who aren't responsible to anyone else. Any criminal organization will have to have particular areas it controls and areas it wants to enter.  This doesn't scale up to a state with millions of citizens, many of whom have differing opinions on what the purpose of government should be.)

The question would be relative advantage and alignment of purpose with ideology: Will there be more people attacking jihadist websites or defending them?  Will the defenders be more or less skillful than the attackers? Given equivalent forces, is the advantage to the defenders advantage or the attackers? (Probably the former - keep the site up, you win.) Who does anonymity help more, here? While hard to tell for sure, it seems like this would be a win for the attackers - that more people would align themselves to that side than the other.

The Attack on Charlie Hebdo

Twelve were killed at a French satirical newspaper called Charlie Hebdo.  It was targeted by Islamic terrorists, because the staff published caricatures of Mohammed.

While this was far from the most deadly terrorist attack, it may turn out to be one of the most significant. Although the attack is much different from the Sony hack, it's inspiring a similar response: People aren't standing for it.

John Minchillo / Associated Press

As a society, we are not willing to die for freedom of speech - yet - but we are becoming very concerned about infringement on freedoms. Theaters not willing to show The Interview led to Sony Pictures pulling the film from distribution, which led to people objecting to it, which led to it being released anyway. And now this attack has led many more people to Charlie Hebdo's site, to what they do - to the very images which the attackers opposed.

This is also known as the Streisand Effect: Barbra objected to a picture of her house being included in a web-based survey of the California coastline. She threatened to sue, not wanting everyone in the world to know exactly what her house looked like. Unfortunately, this led to the lawsuit being published in newspapers, which led people to the survey, which led to many more people gaining access to this information. Sony says it won't show a movie, so everyone demands it be shown. And an obscure French satire site displaying pictures that nobody would really have cared about, is now getting . And those caricatures? Available all over the Internet, and soon to be on t-shirts.

The question comes up sometimes: How can the coddled, protected Heroes become the saviors of civilization? They've never known suffering, they don't have inherent moral strength, they never had to be strong and tough....but they do know what they have, and they trust in their friends, and they know their friends have their backs, too.  Millennials who have been able to express themselves - pamphleteers of everything they think or act or do - appear to take this seriously, perhaps enough to war against it. The war may be starting already.