New American Civil War coming in 2016?

Could a second civil war be coming to the United States in only a few years? A retired US Army colonel has co-authored a piece of fiction that paints the possibility of what he predicts could arise as soon as 2016.

Retired US Army Col Kevin Benson currently instructs soldiers at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas’ University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies but has spent enough time with the Armed Forces to know his way around a battlefield. In a new essay he’s written alongside the University of Kansas’ Dr. Jennifer Weber, Benson implies that the United States could soon be the scene of a bloody uprising that might make way for a new form of government to emerge. In a fictional essay published by the two last month in Small Wars Journal magazine, the team of experts bring forth an argument that ongoing economic unrest and political division within the US population could cause a civil war to erupt right here in the United States in only a few years’ time. The essay, “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future,” is in no way represented as a piece of pure truth, but its writers suggest that a civil war could happen much sooner than Americans may think of certain conditions occurring in the country today persist into the next few years.Benson and Weber paint a picture of what the not-so-distant future could hold if things aren’t changed for the better in a few years, and infer that current conditions could trigger a uprising in their piece, which presents a realistic take on what could be done in event of an “insurrection” launched by the Tea Party and its allies:“The Great Recession of the early twenty-first century lasts far longer than anyone anticipated. After a change in control of the White House and Congress in 2012, the governing party cuts off all funding that had been dedicated to boosting the economy or toward relief. The United States economy has flatlined, much like Japan’s in the 1990s, for the better part of a decade. By 2016, the economy shows signs of reawakening, but the middle and lower-middle classes have yet to experience much in the way of job growth or pay raises. Unemployment continues to hover perilously close to double digits, small businesses cannot meet bankers’ terms to borrow money, and taxes on the middle class remain relatively high. A high-profile and vocal minority has directed the public’s fear and frustration at nonwhites and immigrants. After almost ten years of race-baiting and immigrant-bashing by right-wing demagogues, nearly one in five Americans reports being vehemently opposed to immigration, legal or illegal, and even U.S.-born nonwhites have become occasional targets for mobs of angry whites”.Those conditions, the authors presuppose, set the stage for a conservative uprising that receives “a groundswell of support from other tea party groups, militias, racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant associations such as the Minutemen, and other right-wing groups.”“In May 2016 an extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement takes over the government of Darlington, South Carolina, occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council, and placing the mayor under house arrest,” the story continues. “Activists remove the chief of police and either disarm local police and county sheriff departments or discourage them from interfering. In truth, this is hardly necessary. Many law enforcement officials already are sympathetic to the tea party’s agenda, know many of the people involved, and have made clear they will not challenge the takeover. The militia members are organized and have a relatively well thought-out plan of action.”Although the essay makes no attempts at encouraging an uprising, it does disclose that the US Army does have very real plans for putting any domestic insurgency on ice if it is attempted on American soil: drafted back in 2010, the US Army Training and Doctrine Command for 2016-2028 lists operating procedures for a military offensive on US soil in the event of a mass civil uprising. Even still, though, that isn’t to say that the essay isn’t without its critics. DC’s Washington Times has called the piece “a choppy patchwork of doctrinal jargon and liberal nightmare” that, according to the paper’s editorial staff, “isn’t a literary device but an operational lay-down intended to present the rationale and mechanisms for Americans to fight Americans.”