Same as before...
because a tyrannical government would send drones, A-10s, and tanks to quell any civilian revolts?
AR-15s?
Some of these people don’t have proper shoes. I have seen shoes made out of Kumho tires. And they’re not even U.S. citizens.
The U.S. has employed drones, A-10s, artillery, guided missiles… a whole hell of a lot of resources. Hundreds of billions of dollars.
After nearly 20 years of fighting these “poorly armed” people, we’re about to finally quit. Because there is no [feasible] way to win. We don’t even know what “winning” looks like today.
War is not simply killing the enemy. War is a struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other by force.
You do not win a war by killing the enemy. You win a war by destroying his ability to fight. Killing your enemy is just one tried-and-true method of destroying your enemy’s ability to fight. But it is not the only way. It is not even the most efficient way.
Unless you’re willing to slash and burn, asymmetric warfare is not won by having the biggest or most expensive toys. It’s by using the toys you do have to grind your enemy down in materiel and morale. To undercut his economic and social support. So that even if your enemy has all the toys to fight, you’ve attrited him so badly that he no longer desires to pay the high cost of using them.
So, your military personnel are murdering civilians in mass numbers with expensive toys?
Well, let’s get down to brass tacks. I mean, really basic, gritty uncomfortable stuff about occupying an armed society. At the end of the day those military personnel are greatly outnumbered. And they live in homes and have families and they have to sleep. Right in those angry civilian’s backyards.
Sure, Lieutenant Smith can reach out and touch someone by predator drone. If Ireland taught us anything, one night Smith will go to the local off-base watering hole. And he won’t come home that night. They’ll find him dead in an alley or floating in a river.
Oh, sure. They’re not supposed to talk about what they do. But, it happens. Loose lips. Internal leaks. It’s inevitable—especially close to home. Today, the Air Force has about 900 drone pilots. How many pilots could a tyrannical government afford to lose? How fast can you re-train them?
Sure, you can take increasingly drastic action to control the civilian population. And you’ll only exacerbate the pushback. And where’re your bullets and beans coming from? Who is producing and packaging it? Is it still safe? Those aircraft burn fuel. After several months of these operations, where are you going to get that fuel? Other civilians? Supply chains coming from civilian contractors are vulnerable. And collaborators are just targets. How are you going to operate when over 300 million people can deny you—and all of your supply chain—freedom of movement?
Like I said. This is ugly stuff.
So now, in addition to this murderous government killing civilians, you’ve got to protect your personnel, their homes, their families, food production and processors, private contractors, fuel lines, highways, etc. And that’s before we even consider external threats who might smell opportunity.
So you really have a tyrannical government? The scale of operations you’ll need to contemplate will quickly explode in complexity and resource requirements. Yes, you can have a bit of fun oppressing your civilian population. But the logistics will ultimately sink whatever tyrannical fantasies you have.
Yes, even a poorly trained, armed populace is capable of defending and prevailing against a much larger, better equipped military. Not at any small cost. People die in armed conflict. But they can win. And that is the way things are.
And the fact that this is the way things are, tends to “discourage” ambitious and corrupt men from future actions they might take. Which would lead us down the path where such a tyrannical government would be willing to inflict such heavy casualties on their citizens with impunity.
Petty tyrannies maybe. But, outright tyranny isn’t logistically possible. So long as people have the means to resist you.
People who state this absurd objection are effectively saying, “And that’s why we need to disarm the people. So they can’t fight back at all.”
Something else to think about, I had posted this back in 2013 I believe and it is still pertinent to what is going on,
Stick to your guns–no matter what!
My line in the sand;
I would rather be shot by a government thug while standing in the middle of my street
than to be shot in the back of the head by a government thug while kneeling next to a pit.
by Matt Bracken
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”