SEARCHING FOR NEWTONIAN CERTAINTIES IN A QUANTUM UNIVERSE

Quantum Terror—the Probabilities don’t look all that good.
We are looking for the very very small, and tons of them. A quantum mechanics kind of problem
In conventional wars fought over the past few thousand years armies or countries confronted each other either across borders as in WWI and WWII, on fields in the middle of nowhere, or they were “fought” through technology and the threat to use it as in the Cold War. In both cases it was clear at all times what threats each side posed to the other and there were very few, if any, surprises. WWI was won when two equal forces clashed and one of them developed a superior technology (the tank that actually worked). WWII was won by the country (side) that had superior numbers or brand new technology. At no time did the opposing forces have to consider a sudden uprising behind the lines within their own countries, a sudden development of a superior force somewhere along their lines—the Battle of the Bulge was only a battle because American air power was kept on the ground for a week due to bad weather----or a universal shift in the laws of nature.

In other words, careful calculations were possible, enemy attacks could be accounted for in advance, and wars were fought by the von Clausewitz rules, rules which stated that the side with the most wins; and that the clever general will secretly mass superior force somewhere along a line and attack. This held true in the First Gulf War as Saddam was crushed. It held true for the Second Gulf War that was over in ten to twenty days. But now we’re fighting something completely different. Ten thousand or more little cells or armed platoons stationed in fifty or more countries, platoons that are invisible to the naked eye.

The tiny stuff as opposed to the tens of divisions massed along a line. Call it Quantum Terror.

Quantum mechanics came into being because all the known formulas that worked like a charm for big things like planets, stars, space exploration, and internal combustion didn’t work at all for the tiny sub atomic particles that cannot be seen by the devices available. They are just there. Quantum mechanics tells us that when you’re dealing with the super small you cannot tell anything for sure, all you can do is calculate the probabilities for an occurrence or two or three and you don’t know where, what, or when. You don’t even know how. The probabilities for the parameters of occurrences are all you can calculate. Quantum mechanics shows that things to do with these tiny sub atomic particles cannot be solved using physics. Quantum mechanics also shows that two identical occurrences can take place in widely divergent places at the same time for no known reason. Does communication take place, or does it just happen?

The War on Terror is actually a search for Newtonian Certainties in a Quantum universe.

Impossible.

What we are facing in the “war on terror” are thousands of tiny little armies or cells that can erupt anywhere on the globe at any time. A quantum enemy that can erupt in any one of fifty countries on any day. A revenge rape in Afghanistan, the murder of ten Hindus in India, the burning of a couple of villages in Timor, the assassination of two or three non Muslim government office holders in Indonesia, the murder of fifty Iraqis in Baghdad, the burning of crops in Thailand, genocide in Africa, and so on. Were there probabilities for the London attack? Sure. But until it happened nobody had an idea of who, what, where, or when. Will the U.S. be hit again? Sure, but who will do it, where it will happen, and when it will happen are only probabilities. We are used to dealing with a reality where things are always one way or the other. Quantum mechanics tells us that things can hover between partly this way and partly that way.

And so on.

We are fixated on finding A Single Leader here and there. There ain’t no Single Leader. There are just a thousand or ten thousand little leaders who can relate to each other spontaneously. Or not. Little leaders who we catch, or not. There’s a million little sub atomic ready-to-kill-and-die Muslims running around everywhere who are invisible to the all the sophisticated tools available today who are ready to join an invisible little cell.

Or not. It might depend on a mullah, an imam, or something published in Newsweek Magazine. And keep in mind that there are other terror groups besides the overtly Muslim groups that sometimes interact: Basque terror, Hindu terror (not publicized too much), IRA terror (subsidized by U.S. money and the Clinton White House), the terror being conducted in Columbia by their drug cartels, The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, 17 November (Greek), Kurdistan Workers’ Party (calmed down lately), Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (inside Iran trying to oust the government), PKK, the tribal terror in Africa just to name a few. Terror has become THE choice of weapons all over the world.

I don't have a "unified field theory" to solve this quandary any more than anybody has for Science. Not even Einstein could come up with one. The only thing I can think of is to create an alternate reality that the sub atomic Muslims will be attracted to. Like a magnetic field where a magnet is set out on a table and tiny particles of iron are spread about it. Within a short while the pieces of iron will coalesce around both north and south ends of the magnet and form a field that can be seen. Then we can kill them.

Or not.