Behold the counterstrike, agents of the third millenial

Hassasins jumping off the Alamut fortress to their doom

You ever wake up one day and figure out that you are actually still sleeping? That you are really a two bit player in an early William Gibson cyberpunk novel, remember the one?

Goes like this; islamic death cult, antagonistas hopped up on Captogen, an amphetamine that gives the user feelings of invincibility, use play stations and dark world social media techniques to communicate and foil the cyber bulls and in a hashishin move that would please the illustrious ancient Hassan i sabbah, simultaneously embark on a suicide war against all of the leading world powers.

The rag tag band of warriors, welcoming death, comes perilously close to success, controlling large swaths of land in Iraq, Syria and now Libya as well as pledges of fealty from Somalia, Mali and Nigeria.

They have a continuous supply of willing recruits flooding in from Chechnya, China and Europe, with a large contingent from the United States as well, many of them conversos seduced by the heady thrill of violence and a seeming way to play a video game for keeps rather than having any actual belief in allah and the virginal isle.

Derided as a "j.v. team" by the President, aided by a manchurian sleeper cell network of walking time bombs, the ragtag misfits, funded by high level Saudis and Bahrani salafists, they master the asymmetric fighting tactics of Ho Chi Minh and Che and cause major casualties to soft targets globally and in the heartland.

The esteemed leader cautions that we have nothing to fear but fear itself but the people are legitimately concerned and they've heard that one before and there are more and more "incidents" but nothing that raises the magic bar to the level of existential threat since no television stars have yet been whacked and the casualties are still within the bounds that the administration and the Rand Corp. finds acceptable.

All the calculus changed of course when they managed to get their hands on the Pakastani nuclear arsenal. A few payments and looks the other way and civilization's course sat perched on the edge of a scimitar. The cyber hassishins had called their shot on every instance in the past, you would have thought that the leaders of the West would have addressed their threat more carefully and rationally. 

Who would have predicted that aid would come from such an unlikely source and at such an unlikely time?

to be continued...