I am and will always be an odd one to be writing about the state of America's urban areas. If you've been reading my work, you know I grew up in a rural setting in Iowa and am a happy rural dweller myself now. I have little or no time for cities, despite having lived in them for four decades. I find them unpleasant; crowded, noisy, and, to be honest, they stink. I like the clean country air of Alaska's Susitna Valley, and if that means I have to put up with long, dark, sub-Arctic winter nights, then I do, that's all.
With that being true, why am I still worried about America's cities? Because our cities are the beating hearts of our nation. Much of the country's economic activity happens there. Urban areas contain a lot of the country's industry and academia. What's more, our cities used to be the pride of the nation, but that's not so much the case anymore. Open-air drug use, huge homeless encampments, and rampant crime, including rioting against federal immigration officers, are taking their toll.
But now, things may be approaching a dangerous flash point. President Trump has threatened Minnesota and Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz with declaring the unrest in Minneapolis to be an active insurrection, which allows the president to use active military to restore order.
Now there are signs that this may be in the works. President Trump's War Department has reportedly sent an order to the 11th Airborne in Alaska, to prepare to send two battalions of infantry to Minnesota.
The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers based in Alaska who specialize in operating in arctic conditions to be ready in case of a possible deployment to Minnesota, two defense officials said Sunday.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans, said two infantry battalions of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division have been given prepare-to-deploy orders.
One defense official said the troops are standing by to deploy to Minnesota should President Donald Trump invoke the Insurrection Act.
Meanwhile, Governor Walz has threatened to call up the Minnesota National Guard, and that may put them in the position of facing federal troops - with the Guard and the Airborne on opposite sides.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Wednesday the state's National Guard was prepared to deploy if necessary following the fatal shooting of a woman during a federal immigration enforcement operation, saying, "We've never been at war with our federal government."
During a news conference, Walz said he issued a warning order to the Guard, meaning an initial step to increase preparations should troops be needed amid heightened tensions after Wednesday's shooting.
"We are preparing the National Guard," he said. "They are prepared to be deployed if necessary."
This has shades of Fort Sumter written all over it. One foot put wrong, one shot fired through anger, fear, or carelessness, and this thing could go up in flames like a tar barrel.
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Consider what it means to have American soldiers facing each other from opposite sides. That's how civil wars start, and if one looks at history, civil wars are the nastiest wars of all, with the possible exception of religious wars. They pit brother against brother, family against family, neighbor against neighbor. There are ample examples throughout history; we can remember the Spanish Civil War, or the Balkans crisis after the breakup of Yugoslavia, for examples of just how ugly these wars can be.
Complicating this is the fact that, should something erupt between two groups of American soldiers who are inexplicably on opposite sides, it will lead to a largely urban war. Having spent some time around infantry units myself (many, many years ago now) I do remember training for what we called "Military Operations in Urban Terrain," or MOUT. I remember a hard-bitten, crusty old E-7 (Sergeant, First Class) who was one of the primary instructors. He cautioned us repeatedly, that this was the one kind of operation we never, ever wanted to get involved in. Urban area battle is always at close quarters, and is always fought, bitterly, from street to street, from building to building, with both sides having thousands of perfect locations providing cover, concealment and ambush points.
It's also a type of battle that can attract armed irregulars. There have been hints, all unconfirmed as of this writing, of leftist protesters calling on their compatriots to arm themselves. That could lead to a whole new facet of this kind of war; the laws of war are harsh on francs-tireurs. Escalation piled upon escalation; that leads to a free-for-all, and nobody could know how that would end up, except that our urban areas would primarily pay the price.
The famous Roman statesman and orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero, once said:
Laws are silent in time of war.
That's the danger we face now. One careless moment, one shot fired, one vehicle carelessly driven that strikes a soldier, and the societal bonds of law are broken. Then, it's Katie-bar-the-door, because there's no predicting what could happen next, save that it won't be good, and there is a good chance the republic won't survive it in any recognizable form.
And, we must remember, it's the left that brought us to this pass.
