"Leftists themselves are too cowardly to actually carry out massive terrorist" attacks.You have a point there. The Eugene anarchists and some ELF thugs might be groomed into some really nasty terrorists.What about eco-terrorism? I live in Seattle and we saw just how violent these wack-pukes can be during the WTO riots.
I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a rebel army, as in a civil war. But if it was a coalition of Islamic & homegrown leftist terrorist groups carrying out a dirty war, that would be possible.
Then what's really weird is if you add in some of those neo-Nazi skinhead/Christian Identity groups who were writing approvingly of 9/11 a couple years ago. Can you imagine Islamists, eco-terrorists, and Aryan Nation-types coming together on a coherent political platform on which to try to base a breakaway country?
I figure to have a true civil war you'd need actual units of the armed forces switching sides. A colonel or general, of course, would have to have a somewhat realistic political vision or philosophy to seduce them and to get the troops under their command to rally around. In today's world that rules out leftism, Islamofacism, or Naziism.
There's always Aztlan & the Reconquista to worry about, but that's not the issue that's driving the country apart like the war on terror is.
You are thinking in conventional terms. If it ever came to civil strife in this country it would be largely irregular or guerrila warfare -- riots in the streets, civil destruction and a breakdown of order and eventually economic activity. The left can be very violent...their roots are in violence but not in the kind of violence that is army on army, in the kind that brought about the French and Russian revolutions. Ask the people of L.A., who have suffered through many riots, whether Democrat voters and consticuencies can be violent!