NYTimes warns of "Coming Swarm"
A New York Times Op-Ed piece by John Arquilla, a Naval Postgraduate School professer, titled "The Coming Swarm" warns of a possible terrorist threat in the form of a "swarm" attack, a series of simultaneous small-unit actions much like the Thanksgiving Mumbi attacks. The piece correctly points out that anti-terrorism respondents are geared toward a single mass-casualty event, where Mumbai was paralyzed by a half-dozen two-man teams.
I made a similar prediction shortly after the Mumbai event in a Knox Report column, "The Siege of Mumbai " and friend Derek Bernard followed up with a piece by Richard Munday that was printed in The TImes of London. Mr. Munday focused on an obvious point that seemingly went right over the head of Professor Arquilla, that being that some of the would-be victims might happen to be armed. That there could be an armed citizen to fight back would indeed be a tall-odds proposition in disarmed Mumbai, London, or in Monterey, California, home of the the Naval Postgraduate School. But in Phoenix, Dallas, or Orlando, where roughly two percent of the population have obtained concealed carry permits, the odds tilt.
In those cities, I suppose we can expect the attacks to occur in airports or other disarmed victim zones.
