*"The great questions of the day will be decided not by speeches and majority votes
... but by iron and blood." - Otto von Bismark.*

What will Civil War II actually be like? Consider these patterns that wars usually follow: First, the more dissimilar the combatants are in race, nationality, religion, language and culture the more vicious the fighting usually is, America's wars of aggression against the Indians involved two sides that were completely dissimilar, and the results were hideous tortures and genocide. On the other hand, our first civil war, while extremely violent, was one of the least vicious wars ever fought due to the lack of these stated differences.

Civil War II will clearly be more like the Indian wars than our first civil war because wars fought by dissimilar armies inevitably produce excesses. In Civil War I, torture of prisoners and mutilation of the dead were rare. In the Indian wars and again in Vietnam, another war with dissimilar armies, such practices were employed by the fighters of both sides, sometimes even as a form of recreation.

Civil War II will degenerate into premeditated and systematic mass slaughter because other factors will also fuel its frenzy. Unlike Civil War I, but like the wars against the Indians, one of the goals will be to drive others from the lands wherein they reside, which guarantees fanatical resistance and necessitates measures sufficient to the objective.

This presence of civilians in battle zones will certainly increase the fury of Civil War II. Many will be killed accidentally, others on purpose, leading to reprisals, which will in turn lead to counter reprisals. In Civil War I, some of the most vicious fighting occurred in the border states with mixed populations where irregular bands like Quantrill's Raiders sprang up.

In Civil War I, almost all the combatants were members of the regular military. In Civil War II, many civilians, including women and children, will fight as guerrillas which will lead to their mass elimination on the grounds that they're combatants, or at least military assets, exactly as happened in My Lai, Vietnam. In Civil War II, as in Yugoslavia, many combatants will join specifically to avenge the murder of their families. I leave to your imagination the fate of captives in the hands of such warriors.

I was once asked if any of the Geneva Conventions were applied to prisoners my paratrooper unit took in Vietnam. I answered that rule 556 was generally applied, 556, I pointed out, is the caliber of the M16 assault rifle. The application was generally to the head. Such was war in the rock 'n' roll slaughterhouse, and so it shall be when Civil War II sweeps imperial America.

Men who have served in regular military organizations have a misconception that nonprofessionals are inherently inferior to regular military formations. This misconception is shared by the general public and the media who constantly use such adjectives as ragtag and disorganized when referring to guerrillas. Parade ground spit and polish are not to be confused with battlefield competence. Guerrillas, militias, and even mobs can, and often do, defeat regular armies when the circumstances are right, as was often the case in our own revolution against the British Empire.

Regular military organizations are oriented towards fighting other regular military organizations in stand-up battles, not guerrillas (or regular armies using guerrilla tactics) as testified to by our victory in Desert Storm, and our defeat by the Vietnamese. Our military has numerous large formations equipped with heavy weapons, but very few smaller Special Forces-type units, which are pound for pound far superior at engaging guerrillas.

This inappropriate orientation of our military will continue just as it did all during Vietnam even when it was abundantly clear that it was a formula for certain disaster. There are reasons for this. Our military is a willing captive of our defense industry. As Country Joe and the Fish pointed out at Woodstock: "There's plenty of money to be made, supplying the Army with the tools of the trade."

And that money is clearly in capital intensive, big-ticket items like stealth bombers, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, Patriot missiles, and Star Wars gadgets, all of which have little or no utility in counterinsurgency.

To be fair, these items are required to counter ongoing foreign threats like Iraq and Russia, but there are deeper rasons that will continue to direct our military resources to these big ticket items all out of proportion to their actual need. First, many of our top military brass are simply corrupt. They go straight from retirement to the payoff of consulting for defense contractors in a form of institutionalized bribery.

Second, without huge formations to order about, there is little for our abundance of overweight, over-age generals to do. General Schwarzkopf and his staff were just the sort of techno-managers needed in Desert Storm, but such individuals are usually worse than useless in the dispersed, small unit actions that characterize guerrilla warfare, where active and independent fighting leaders, not managers, are required.

It is clear that the federal military will embark on Civil War II with inappropriate organization and weapons. When the only tool you have is a sledge hammer, all about begins to look in dire need of smashing. The rebel guerrillas and militias on the other hand, will certainly have a more flexible and decentralized structure bordering on chaos. The Afghan resistance groups, for instance, never united against the Russians, but fought them to a standstill nevertheless.

Guerrilla leaders will actually lead their troops, and those not killed will, unlike regular officers, be able to employ lessons learned in future actions. Rebel officers will achieve their positions based on success in actual battle, not on their ability to stay awake during staff meetings or meet the latest racial quota.

Rebel soldiers will be volunteers who will not suffer their lives being thrown away in pointless operations like American regulars in Vietnam were, thus, on the whole, increasing the efficiency of rebel operations. Federal soldiers, on the other hand, will increasingly be politicized officers and conscripts who will have ample opportunities to desert or otherwise shirk their duty.

The federal military will be ensnared in several dilemmas: If they use volunteers, they won't have sufficient manpower. If they use draftees, they'll wind up with hordes of disgruntled shirkers just as in Vietnam.

If they resort to heavy weapons of mass destruction, they'll kill civilians and swell rebel ranks with dedicated fanatics just as they did in Vietnam. If they don't employ their heavy weapons, they'll be giving up one of their few military advantages and thereby increase federal casualties, lowering federal morale. If the federal forces consolidate their formations in large easily-defended firebases, they'll forfeit vast areas to the control of the rebels just as we Americans did in Vietnam. If the federal government disperses its forces, they will be vulnerable to concentrated rebel attacs.

If the federal government keeps its units integrated, they'll have firefights within their own ranks. If they use segregated units, they'll be admitting that the cause they're fighting for is a fraud.

**The Dynamics of Counterinsurgency**

The classic political means of ending any guerrilla uprising is a co-option of the rebel base of support - instituting reforms that extent legal rights and economic opportunities to the rebellious people, at least to the extent that they cease supporting the guerrillas, who are then defeated in detail, hunted down one band after another.

When co-option is not offered or is rejected, usually only the classic military tool of genocide of the rebellious people remains, or at least the number of them sufficient that the survivors are terrorized into submission.

In our war for Independence, the arrogant establishment of the British Empire refused to co-opt the American colonists, but lacked the resolve to embark upon a campaign of genocide. They committed the classic error of thinking that professional soldiers would easily defeat so-called ragtag militias and lightly-armed guerrillas. The limeys wound up playing tag in the boondocks, much as we Americans did in Vietnam.

We Americans made no such error in dealing with the Indians, who could not have been co-opted in any case due to vast cultural differences. The Indians were never directly defeated militarily. They were ethnically cleansed until they absolutely ceased all military activity.

In Civil War I, the Confederates accepted their conventional military defeat only because they were aware that their co-option and correct treatment were assured. Had that not been the case, they would have fought on as guerrillas.

It is a stark fact that most ethnically-based revolutions can be crushed only by ethnic cleansing or similar butchery, and that's exactly how most such rebellions are in fact crushed. It is also a historic fact that the more different the two sides perceive each other, the more often the tool of genocide is employed. As for co-option. Civil War II will begin precisely because co-option is being scornfully rejected as "cultural genocide," and it will proceed directly to ethnic cleansing for the same reason.

**Looting**

*"People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable, provided that it is a
victorious war and that there is not too much interference with rape and plunder." -
Bertrand Russell*

Another factor will make Civil War II self-propelled, at least in its early stages, and that is looting. This was the pattern in Yugoslavia where Serb militias systematically pillaged entire villages, and then burnt down the houses so the victims would have nothing to return to. Stolen items like television sets were loaded into stolen cars and driven away. A year's salary could be gotten in a few minutes with an AK47, not to mention that old military pastime of rape.

Gangs and militias will control lucrative black markets and protection rackets, giving them much incentive to reject peace. If Civil War II breaks out during a severe economic downturn, which is almost certain, many unemployed men will find it a dramatic improvement in their lives.

America is awash in unemployed young men who are economically useless due to their lack of capital and marketable skills. While utterly useless in the economic sense, they are definitely assets in the military equation, because vigorous, motivated, and aggressive young males are exactly what are needed in infantry combat. This studied neglect of economically useless young males will continue because the economic establishment considers any investment in them a drain on their precious corporate profits, and they import H-1B non-immigrant foreigners rather than invest in young Americans. Ironic as it may seem, the establishment is actively assembling the very army that will cut their throats. But it won't be merely for worldly gain or revenge that these young men will fight to their deaths in Civil War II. It will be for something noble, for something basic to higher human nature, no matter how perversely manifested. They will be self-motivated by a sense of purpose, a sense of purpose that is now entirely absent from their dismal and aimless lives.

These young males of all races have grievances, real grievances, and lots of them. They also have guns, real guns, and lots of them. As the ancient Chinese curse goes, "May you live in interesting times!" Well, I fully expect that the sole virtue of the multiethnic American Empire will be a decided absence of boredom.

**Economic Collapse**

Since undemocratic and multiethnic empires are always instable, they often topple into internal or external war when they encounter some additional source of instability. Certainly in the case of Mexico and probably America as well, that shock will be economic. If, or rather when, America undergoes a severe economic slump on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the establishment may make the mistake of cutting off various welfare and unemployment benefits in order to sustain its own luxurious life-style. This tragic miscalculation could well provoke rioting in every major city that will be impossible to stop prior to its exploding into all-out race war all across America. How many will die in Civil War II? In 1860 the population of the United States was just over 31 million. The combined battle deaths of the Union and Confederate Armies in Civil War I were approximately 215,000 (World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1990, p. 792). The U.S. Census Bureau projected population for 2050 is 393,000,000. Projecting from these figures gives 2.678.000 battle dead for Civil War II. This figure should be regarded as a baseline minimum because Civil War I's casualties were largely reserved for military personnel. Unhappily, such will not be the case with our next civil war.

Civil War II in America will set off a super depression that will plunge the entire globe into economic chaos, which will farther deepen the economic collapse here in America. The final result could well be mass starvation. During previous wars in North America, food production was low tech and localized. Most food was produced in the vicinity it was consumed in, and every area had many people who knew how to grow food. Food production, processing, and distribution were not much dependent on outside areas. Even so, large areas of the South came close to mass starvation during our first civil war.

Today, our food producing system in North America is high tech, specialized, and dispersed. Electrical power for our farms is usually generated many miles away. Fuel and spare parts for the farm machinery are likewise produced at great distances from our farms, often overseas.

All the necessary items that must flow into our farms are generally produced at great distances from them. They all converge on our farms, which are themselves scattered all over America. The food produced again flows outwards in all directions to processing centers, and the processed food once again flows outwards in all directions over great distances to reach the consumers. All these steps are high tech and dispersed, a national and global web of highly specialized sub units as completely dependent upon each other as they are dispersed. Today, it is just about as impossible for communities to produce their own food with locally obtained inputs as it would be for them to produce their own space shuttle from locally fabricated components.

The disruptions of Civil War II will hamper the inflow of fertilizer, seed, spare parts, fuel and electricity into our farms. Food production will plummet, and the distribution of the little food produced will likewise be difficult, often impossible. Certainly, food will be used as a weapon and withheld from certain areas such as cities under siege.

Depending on the scope and duration of Civil War II, tens of millions could perish in a mass starvation unprecedented since the beginning of time. Millions more will die of disease due to immune systems weakened by lack of food. The very old and children will die off first. Soldiers, the most valuable and most heavily-armed portion of the population, will suffer the least.

In the worst case scenario organized government will vanish entirely, and the fighting will degenerate into what the Germans term Bandenkreig. Bandenkreig means a war of bands, which is not to be confused with organized guerrilla warfare. In Bandenkreig, independent, roving bands battle each other for access to food, loot, liquor, rape, and sheer survival something akin to futuristic Australian films such Mad Max.

Bandenkreig is no mere downunder hallucination. Bandenkreig is the form of societydestroying anarchy that has leveled much of Africa including Rwanda, Somalia, and Liberia where Bandenkreig has included human sacrifice and ritual killing (The New York Times, September 1,1995, p. 1.) (The New York Times, May 9, 1995, p. 4.). Some children in Rwanda were reduced to picking undigested pieces of corn out of human excrement for food. Mexican revolutions often go through Bandenkreig stages. Bandenkreig also developed during the Thirty Years War that depopulated much of Germany from 1618 to 1648. Bandenkreig is a real possibility in Civil War II.