Mike Davis, author of "Dead Cities" and "Late Victorian Holocausts", points that, since the early 1990s, facing an ever more global imperial mission into the "arc of instability," the energy heartlands of our planet, the US military has been in preparation mode--preparation for a grim future fighting in the sprawling slum cities of the Third World. The battle of Fallujah and the conflicts in Baghdad's slums indicate that that time may be here.