Dark thoughts

Peggy Noonan has a column in the opinion journal that says we
shouldn't be so quick to shut down so many military bases:

The federal government is doing something right now that is exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. It is forgetting to think dark. It is forgetting to imagine the unimaginable.

Governments deal in data. People in government see a collection of data as something to be used, manipulated or ignored, but whatever they do with it, it's real. It's numbers on a page. You can point to them.

To think dark, on the other hand, takes imagination--and something more.
.......

But they're wrong. What they ought to do, and what the commission reviewing the Pentagon's plan ought to do, is sit down and think dark.

In the rough future our country faces, bad things will happen. We all know this. It's hard to imagine some of those things on a beautiful day with the sun shining and the markets full, but let's imagine anyway.

Among the things we may face over the next decade, as we all know, is another terrorist attack on American soil. But let's imagine the next one has many targets, is brilliantly planned and coordinated. Imagine that there are already 100 serious terror cells in the U.S., two per state. The members of each cell have been coming over, many but not all crossing our borders, for five years. They're working jobs, living lives, quietly planning.

I agree strongly with Peggy Noonan's dark thoughts, we shouldn't be closing
bases just to save a little money, when in the next few years we don't know
what we'll be needing.

My dark thoughts are eerily close to hers...if I were a terrorist bastard
I wouldn't waste my punches blowing up embassies or trains in the US,
those type of attacks are for the local Franchisees, McQueda to handle,
I'd slowly gather resources and try and win the war in one blow.

Remember, not only do these people think that destroying the US
and creating a worldwide caliphate is possible, but that it is ordained
by God. These might be terrorist assholes, but they are also smart
serious people who are willing to die for their mistaken beliefs.

They are thinking what are to us very dark thoughts: How do we destroy
the United States so that the remaining people would have no option but to
convert to Islam or die. Which might sound silly until you think dark thoughts.

10 nukes destroy 10 major US cities, an Ultimatum is received: All adult
males must convert or ten more nukes will go off. What happens will depend
on who is in control at the time, do we nuke the world, or convert, or what?
Either way, centralizing the US military too much via base closures might not
be the best idea at this time.