I happened to see this on Quora and thought it was a pretty neat little Cold War Trivia. I have never been or worked at the 5 sided puzzle palace.
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union kept at least two nuclear missiles permanently aimed at a tiny, octagonal "house" in the dead center of the Pentagon.
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense and one of the largest office buildings in the world. Its famous five-ring design surrounds a five-acre open-air plaza. Sitting right in the middle of that plaza was a mysterious little "house."
Russian intelligence analysts reviewing satellite imagery noticed a highly suspicious pattern. Every single day, a massive number of top-ranking military officers, defense officials, and generals would all leave the main building and converge on this small structure at the exact same time. They would huddle around it for a while and then disperse back into the Pentagon.
To Soviet intelligence, the conclusion was obvious. Why else would the top military brass of the United States gather in a heavily guarded central courtyard at the same time every day?
They assumed the structure had to be the entrance to a deeply buried underground bunker, a secure briefing room, or the Pentagon's top-secret command center. Because military lore held that the Soviets had locked multiple warheads onto those exact coordinates, Pentagon employees gave the location a darkly humorous nickname: "Ground Zero."
The highly classified meeting spot was actually a hot dog stand.
The officers and officials weren't gathering for top-secret briefings; they were just getting lunch. With over 20,000 employees working inside the labyrinth of the Pentagon, walking all the way to the main cafeteria took too long. The tiny building in the courtyard—which sold hot dogs, burgers, and sodas—was simply the most convenient place for officers in the inner rings to grab a quick bite and get some fresh air.
While the idea of Soviet missiles targeting a hot dog stand sounds like an urban legend—and it’s entirely possible the Soviets simply targeted the center of the Pentagon because it was the center—the story became a beloved piece of Cold War folklore. The old hot dog stand was eventually torn down in 2006 and replaced with a modernized snack bar, but the spot is still affectionately known as Ground Zero.
The original Pentagon hot dog stand, known as the Ground Zero Cafe, in the center courtyard before it was torn down in 2006. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
From everything that I read about the Japanese Soldier in WWII was that they were fanatical, dedicated, would sacrifice everything for the goals set by their commanders, they were imbued by a form of "bushido" or Martial spirit or the samurai spirit. Please realize that my descriptions are very simple, I could go on for pages if I wanted to do a deep dive. I respected the Japanese Soldier of WWII for what he could do, I did not admire them They were often cruel to the people they captured, but that was to me part of the draconian disciplinary system of the Japanese Army, where the lower enlisted were beaten by their NCO's for the smallest infractions, and they were frequently treated with disdain by their officers. They viewed the west as "weak" especially the United States, the Pacific War was brutal compared to the European war, it matched the savagery of the Eastern front, and in some cases exceeded it because there was no quarters given by either side. The Americans learned to be very wary of accepting "surrendering" japanese soldiers because it was frequently a ruse to kill more Americans, and if there were any wounded Americans, captured, they were almost always bayoneted by the Japanese. Like I said, very savage. compared to the War in the European Theater. The Americans had no compunctions of using flame throwers and other weapons on japanese positions during the island hopping campaigns. It was a very different war.
I got this off "Quora"
n "Nemesis" The Battle for Japan 1944–45’ by Max Hastings, a British army officer is quoted as making the observation that the Japanese were first class soldiers fighting in a third-rate army.
The soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army were brave, well trained and highly disciplined. They would rather die than surrender and, consequently, fought to the death to avoid the dishonour of being captured. However, technologically the IJA was backward compared to the other key armies of WWII. It lacked a decent tank nor a doctrine of how to use the ones they did have. In open ground warfare where there was space to maneuver the IJA was hopelessly outclassed, as Slim in Burma and the Red Army in Manchuria before and at the end of the war, proved. Moreover, senior IJA leadership were often appallingly incompetent in sending their forces into battle in adverse circumstances and this manifested especially in the manner in which logistical challenges were fatally underestimated, as noted in the question. This stemmed principally from a shocking underestimation of their enemies. It was frequently assumed that the lightly burdened, fast moving Japanese soldiers would overcome their enemies quickly - as they had done in Malaya and early on in Burma- and capture all the supplies they required from their defeated enemies. But by 1943, the offensive weaknesses of the IJA had been more fully recognized, its initial victories notwithstanding. It became clear that whilst the Japanese soldier was a formidable and ferocious enemy when defending in place behind fixed defensive positions, he was much less so out in the open when attacking.
Unfortunately for the Japanese army, in all three battles mentioned (and others besides) its enemies failed to cooperate by collapsing, forcing the Japanese soldiers to retreat with little food and in difficult conditions. The wounded who could not keep up were either killed or left to kill themselves with grenades, hopefully taking a pursuing Allied soldier with them. In Guadalcanal, on the Kokoda Trail and at Imphal/Kohima, the disastrous result of their offensive failures resulted in mass starvation amongst retreating Japanese soldiers as well as death from disease. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers in the Pacific were bypassed and left to rot on scores of islands and atolls as the United States Navy juggernaut continued its inexorable and innovative island-hopping advance towards Japan’s home islands.
A stark example of the hopelessly unrealistic ambitions of senior Japanese commanders, and their inability to comprehend logistical challenges, was the idiotic plan to disrupt British plans to retake Burma by attacking Imphal and Kohima in northeastern India. The brainchild of General Renya Mutaguchi commanding 15th Army, it would compel Japanese forces to traverse some of the wettest and most rugged country in Asia where annual rainfall sometimes reached 800 inches, with only a tenuous logistical lifeline, mounted against an enemy with overall numerical superiority and command of the air. It also came at a time when Japanese fortunes elsewhere had taken a decided turn for the worst. Mutaguchi proved a complete incompetent but his plan was approved in Tokyo after the most cursory examination of its feasibility by higher command, possibly because Burma was considered very much a sideshow.
The result was a battle in which the Japanese soldiers fought for many weeks with their usual ferocity but with decreasing prospects of success. Worst of all the 15th Army’s already weak logistical lifeline was disrupted by Allied air attacks, and they began to starve. After Mutaguchi refused pleas from subordinates to retreat, one divisional commander took it upon himself to order his division to do so. The incompetent army commander finally had no option but to order a general retreat. But by this time the monsoon had set in, tracks and trails had become all but impossible to navigate and thousands of Japanese soldiers died of starvation, disease and/or their wounds. The despised Mutaguchi was eventually fired.
One key consequence of this calamity was that the Japanese forces available to contest Field Marshal Bill Slim’s masterful campaign to retake Burma were greatly weakened , and even their fighting spirit in the later stages of the campaign was significantly diminished.
Logistics undoubtedly proved an Achilles heel for the IJA throughout the war.
I have an affinity for movies that deal with payback and revenge for wrongs dealt to the person in question. Part of the reason why I like the "Godfather", the 1984 version of "Dune", and others, I think it is part of the American psyche for Justice to right the wrongs kinda thing I suppose.
When Michael Corleone drops his gun in The Godfather, it isn't just cinematic flair. A fleeing man caught with a warm weapon is a murderer. Empty-handed, he's just a panicked bystander.
This cinematic staple—often seen in The Sopranos and Goodfellas—reflects a real-world tactic employed by organized crime syndicates to break the physical chain of evidence immediately after a murder. The highest risk of apprehension occurs in the minutes immediately following a shooting, when responding police lock down the perimeter and stop anyone fleeing the area. Abandoning the weapon ensures the shooter can survive the getaway.
To make this strategy work, the firearm must be a "drop piece"—a weapon that cannot be traced back to the killer. Organized crime members traditionally use stolen guns and file off the serial numbers to prevent law enforcement from tracing the purchase history. Before the hit, the weapon is wiped clean of fingerprints. In The Godfather, Clemenza covers the trigger and grip of Michael’s .38 caliber revolver with special tape so it will not hold prints, ensuring that when the police inevitably recover the gun at the restaurant, it provides them with no actionable leads.
Taking the gun home introduces massive, unnecessary legal exposure. Every firearm leaves microscopic, unique striations on the bullets it fires. When crime scene investigators recover the bullets from a victim’s body, they can definitively match them to the weapon used. If a hitman keeps the gun and their home or car is raided weeks later on an unrelated charge, discovering that weapon provides prosecutors with the physical link needed to secure a murder conviction. Leaving the gun at the scene hands the police a dead end, forcing investigators to rely on witness testimony—which, in cases involving organized crime, is notoriously difficult to obtain.
A Smith & Wesson Model 642 compact revolver. Organized crime hitmen often preferred snubnose revolvers because they were easy to conceal and did not eject spent shell casings.
My honest opinion, especially back then, the British commanders were either brilliant or incompetent, there were no in-betweens with them, partially because of their "class system", they pulled their officers from what is called their Gentry or upper-class, and no matter how incompetent, they made sure that unless there was actual cowardice they would cover it up. Cowardice they would not tolerate. I to this day still am flummoxed by the surrender, and to this day the Australians and New Zealanders still are a bit pissy because it was a huge chunk of their menfolks that got marched into captivity by the Japanese and many didn't return.
Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival’s surrender of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 was the largest surrender of British forces in history and he was therefore bound to come in for a great deal of criticism, not helped by the fact that he was personally not very prepossessing and certainly not the ideal of a General Officer in public opinion.
General Percival
Percival joined the British Army as a private in 1914 and rose to the rank of (temporary) Lieutenant Colonel by the end of the war. In the process he garnered a DSO (with a later second award), a Military Cross and a Croix de Guerre. These are significant medals and so he was obviously no slouch in military matters, especially as he was not a regular soldier. After the war, having taken a regular commission, he attended Staff College and was earmarked for accelerated promotion.
Percival knew Malaya previously, having been posted there as the Chief of Staff to the General Officer Commanding Malaya in the late 1930s. Whilst in this role, Percival correctly assessed the possibility that the Japanese might make an attack on Malaya (and thus Singapore) via Thailand or, contrary to the orthodox view, by landings on the eastern seaboard of the peninsula during the northeast monsoon from October to March.
Funds to rectify the situation were not forthcoming and inter-service rivalry led to the poor placement of RAF airfields in Northern Malaya. This in turn meant that troops had to be dispersed in penny-packets in order to defend them.
In April 1941, Percival was appointed GOC Malaya which meant that he had some seven months to prepare his command before the Japanese attack. He later wrote:
In going to Malaya I realised that there was the double danger either of being left in an inactive command for some years if war did not break out in the East or, if it did, of finding myself involved in a pretty sticky business with the inadequate forces which are usually to be found in the distant parts of our Empire in the early stages of a war.
In this assessment, he was correct. Percival had on hand some 70,000 men (plus 15,000 support troops) with his main force consisting of forty-nine infantry battalions of decidedly mixed quality. The Australian Official Historian later wrote:
Only one of the Indian battalions was up to numerical strength, three had recently arrived in a semi-trained condition, nine had been hastily reorganised with a large intake of raw recruits, and four were being re-formed but were far from being fit for action. Six of the United Kingdom battalions (in the 54th and 55th Brigades of the British 18th Infantry Division) had only just landed in Malaya, and the other seven battalions were under-manned. Of the Australian battalions, three had drawn heavily upon undertrained recruits, new to the theatre. The Malay battalions had not been in action, and the Straits Settlements Volunteers were only sketchily trained.
Partly trained or newly arrived troops contributed to Percival’s problems
He possessed no armour (the Japanese had around 200 tanks) and what tanks and other material were dispatched to Malaya were diverted to Russia or Egypt. Essentially, Malaya was given a low priority and the campaign was over so quickly, a little over two months, that little could be done to redress the situation.
The RAF presence was small and under-equipped with obsolete fighters and the Royal Navy’s Force Z also suffered a catastrophic defeat with the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.
Obsolete Brewster Buffalo fighters
The premise of the Singapore Strategy was that a strong fleet would be despatched to the Far East, based on Singapore, to deter the Japanese. In the event, Force Z consisted of only two capital ships and lacked any air cover - it’s assigned aircraft carrier having run aground in the Caribbean.
This distinctly second rate response was due to the unexpected fall of France in 1940. The Chiefs of Staff reported:
The security of our imperial interests in the Far East lies ultimately in our ability to control sea communications in the south-western Pacific, for which purpose adequate fleet must be based at Singapore. Since our previous assurances in this respect, however, the whole strategic situation has been radically altered by the French defeat. The result of this has been to alter the whole of the balance of naval strength in home waters. Formerly we were prepared to abandon the Eastern Mediterranean and dispatch a fleet to the Far East, relying on the French fleet in the Western Mediterranean to contain the Italian fleet. Now if we move the Mediterranean fleet to the Far East there is nothing to contain the Italian fleet, which will be free to operate in the Atlantic or reinforce the German fleet in home waters, using bases in north-west France. We must therefore retain in European waters sufficient naval forces to watch both the German and Italian fleets, and we cannot do this and send a fleet to the Far East.
HMS Repulse hit by a Japanese bomb - the failure of the Singapore Strategy
Thus the odds were stacked against Percival even though, on paper, he had a superior force and held the defensive advantage.
However, as was common to all the Allied powers at the start of the war, the British severely misjudged the fighting capabilities of the Japanese. In addition, Percival did not grip his subordinates. His relations with Heath (III Indian Corps) and Bennett (Westforce) were not good, nor was the relationship between these two subordinates. Percival also clashed with his immediate superior, Wavell.
Percival appears to have lacked the required ruthlessness to prevail during a crisis. Although he was neither incompetent nor a coward, he was not suited to this role and the hand he was dealt was poor. Even so, his forces performed very poorly against the Japanese and he must take some responsibility for that. It is interesting to speculate of what Montgomery or Auchinleck or Slim would have made of the task.
I saw this on Quora, I was working a lot of Overtime and went straight from work to a social event with my wife, so I didn't have the time to work on anything big.
All good answers. But it really comes down to this. An M1 Garand weighs 11.6 lbs (5.3 kg) fully loaded. It has a 24 in barrel and overall length of 43.5 in. It has a fixed wooden stock and iron sights.
An M4 carbine weighs 7.5 lbs fully loaded, with a 14in barrel and a length of 33in with the buttstock fully extended. Even with all the stuff we have on it nowadays, it might weigh as much as an M1.
Also, the way we now carry our rifles (at the low-ready) means less time is spent bringing the weapon up into an actionable position. Much of this is because the buttstock of the rifle rests in your shoulder. Also, the muzzle is constantly pointed in a safe direction (in the air, what goes up must come down). With the lighter weight rifles of today, the low ready makes more sense in most situations.
Now the high ready that most the G.I.s used in WW2-vietnam makes more sense for heavier/longer weapons. It means less fatigue on the shooters muscles, and is faster bringing a heavy weapon to action. The buttstock doesn’t naturally rest in your shoulder, but with a long rifle, this makes sense.
WHen I was in the U.S Army in the 1980's and Early 1990's, we carried our rifles the way the Vietnam War Soldier carried them. The "Patrol Ready" I believed it was called, kinda like this,
although when I was just walking around, unless I was explicitly to carrying it slung, I would carry it kinda like this like this guy did with the M-14, but I would carry mine around the end of the handguards and the slipring, for both the A1 version and the A2 version I had. I found it easy to carry it. I never carried it by the "carry handle".
Still working on the 2nd part of my rant, might be a 3rd...depending on how it flows.
I saw this on Quora and it was very good, I knew that the 50's and early 60 was the heyday for the cowboy westerns and nobody embodies it like John Wayne. Even the movie "Toy Story" touched on it when the main character "Woody" was a TV cowboy and was very popular until the Space phenonium took hold with the advent of the Mercury/Gemini/ and the Apollo missions with the race to the moon.
Here is the back story on the Movie "Hondo", I think it is one of his best.
A man walks out of the desert carrying his rifle and saddle, accompanied by a dog.
The man’s name is Hondo Lane, and he was riding dispatch for the US Cavalry when he encountered some hostile Indians and lost his horse.
Now, your average person in the here-and-now would sit down and die of thirst or hunger out there in the desert, if put into the same situation. Hondo, on the other hand—in true rugged individualist fashion—uncinched his saddle from his horse and walked away. It’s not known whether he had a destination in mind when he began walking, or whether he knew he’d happen across a settlement or homestead if he headed in a certain direction. But sitting around waiting to die wasn’t in his wheelhouse. As it happened, he stumbled across a homestead where a lone woman and her son lived, and—though perfectly capable of robbing or requisitioning—he agrees to work for the woman until he earns enough to buy a horse from her. (Dispatches be damned, I guess.)
Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is “self-reliance.” Don’t wait for rescue. Don’t beg or borrow. Use what you’ve got. Put your brains and your legs to work. Earn your keep. Don’t give up and don’t take shortcuts.
I saw this on Quora, while taking a break at work, and I thought it was interesting viewpoint. THe views are that of the Author(Not Me, lol) but it does track with my experiences, and what I have seen of 3rd world armies it does track.
by
Roland Bartetzko
I’ll probably make some enemies with this answer, but who cares?
Let’s start with the worst foreign fighters (and why they perform so poorly):
Colombians. It’s not that they lack experience or knowledge, but every foreigner who comes here needs to learn additional skills their home country's military likely didn’t teach them.
These skills are mostly in the areas of drone and electronic warfare, adaptation to the battlefield environment, and TCCC (Tactical Combat Casualty Care). Even training from “richer” Western armies isn’t enough to survive on the Ukrainian frontlines.
Even if you’been serving in your home country's best army unit before you came to Ukraine, there's some machinery here you haven't learned to operate. (Picture: all rights by the author of this post)
Fortunately, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will teach you most of this—if (and that’s a big “if”) you’re willing to learn.
Unfortunately, with the Colombians (and other South Americans as well), the motivation to train and acquire new skills is rather low. Some might say they’re a bit lazy. As a result, they suffer a high number of casualties.
That said, this problem isn’t limited to South Americans. Some combat veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq came here thinking they were untouchable—that their sh*t didn’t stink and they didn’t need any “stupid” training. They quickly learned otherwise—the hard way.
On the other hand, there are many professional soldiers who recognize their limitations and are eager to learn. These individuals make up the majority of foreign volunteer fighters.
Especially among the Americans (many of them former Marines) and the Brits, the mantra is always: “Training, training, training!”
That’s the right attitude. It doesn’t matter where you’re from—an enemy artillery shell or drone doesn’t care about your passport. If you’re too lazy or too arrogant to learn new things, you’ll quickly perish.
I got this question and Answer of "Quora" and it was pretty good I thought.
A guy named "Jerry Bennett" provided the answer, so he got the props.
Still very busy at work and other things going on, once I get some more information, I will put it on here.
As they say, a picture can be worth a thousand words.
The basic rationale behind the Constitution's requirement that states elect presidents rather than the popular vote was that the framers of the Constitution favored a federation of states rather than a national ‘kingdom’ style of government. State’s rights were a guiding principle. In addition, at the time the Constitution was ratified, holding a popular vote in a timely manner was problematic (think Pony Express). So states were given the choice of how to present ‘electors’ to the election assembly (called the Electoral College) that would, in turn, cast two votes, one each for President and Vice President (no, there is no constitutional requirement that the president and vice president come from the same political party).
In our first 80 years as a nation, most state legislators, governors, and state influencers chose who the electors would be and who they would cast votes for. The number of electoral votes allowed from each state was governed by the number of state representatives in Congress (two senators + House Representatives).
This persisted until the late 1800s by which time most states adopted a ‘popular vote’ system within the state to determine the candidate the state electors would present to the college.
Tallying the popular vote within the entire country has always been a false exercise. The popular vote is only relevant within the state in which it is cast. The news media (press) invented a national popular vote and national polls—neither of which are germane to the presidential election.
In recent times, the Electoral College has been seen as a hedge against big city control of national political will. As can be seen, by the map graphic above, large US cities (predominantly Democratic in the last century) would likely control the administrative office of the federal government (Presidency) if not held in check by the Electoral process.
To go from a Federation of States to a Popular Democracy would mean the elimination of state sovereignty to some extent and a constitutional amendment that no Republican state would ratify. No Democrat has ever won the Presidency without also winning the popular vote. In contrast, Republican presidents lost the popular vote in four separate elections where they won the Presidency.
And it will be this way, I will blog when I can. I have a rant peculating and some things that happened at Casa De Garabaldi. I will try to get a post up on Sunday, or I might sleep in, LOL
Well anyway I saw this on Quora while I was on the throne. As I was taught a long time ago "The bossman gets paid a dollar, I get paid a dime, so I get paid to crap on company time". Well anyway I saw this and thought it was worth "Nicking". Afterwards, I added a post I had done back in 2013.
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,
I ran across this from Here. I remember seeing this posted before right after Sandy Hook. Since then, the government has tried to ban certain ammo for a very popular rifle platform. BATF is just doing the bidding of the petulant boy king. I have commented in the past that there is only one way to enter Valhalla and kneeling before the executioner ain't it. I am adding some points to the below essay. I have this thought going through my mind if the time came and I had to choose to die with honor or live as a coward....
If the decision came, I hope I acquit my self as well as the vikings did in this battle, yes I know that this is a movie, but the Alamo was real as was other places that fought against overwhelming odds. I sincerely hope that it never comes to this and we pull away from the abyss that is looming in front of us. There is a lesson here, if everybody choose to fight, the enforcers will quickly lose heart for we vastly outnumber them.
This is a re-post from a couple of years ago. Matt tells it like it is. If we don't resist, it's just a short boxcar ride to a "re-education" camp. Or a bullet in the back of the head. I have made my stance very clear on more than one occasion. 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
If they come to take away your guns by force, they have declared war on the Constitution, and on you. At that point, war is joined, just as it was during another famous gun confiscation raid on April 19, 1775.
If a firearm was legal in 2012, under the 2nd Amendment it’s still legal in 2013 and it will be legal forever, no matter what so-called “executive orders” are handed down or new “laws” are passed by a panicking Congress. Those who say otherwise are liars and traitors and oath breakers and domestic enemies.
Every survivor of every genocide says the same thing: when they come to take your guns, shoot them! Make them take them, and their system of repression will be overwhelmed, because they don’t have millions of jack-booted thugs ready to do armed battles all over the country.
If you give up your arms, you are placing your entire trust in the permanent future benevolence of the U.S. government. This trust is invariably fatal: ask the American Indians about those treaties that were guaranteed forever.
History is clear, with numerous examples, of the danger of gun registration and gun control. The German gun registration laws were enacted during the 1920s Weimar Republic, years before Hitler came to power. German gun registration was mandated in the name of “public safety.” Note that phrase well. I’m sure today’s liberal utopians would agree that they were “common sense” and “reasonable” gun control laws. Don’t we all want “public safety?”
Then Hitler rose to power, and used the gun registration lists to first disarm the Jews, and then to force them into starving, overcrowded ghettos, and finally into mass graves and gas chambers. The Nazi genocide of the Jews was enabled by those “common sense” German gun registration lists.
Millions of Polish Jews were rounded up by German military police battalions. The German military police only needed a 1-10 ratio to their victims. A mere 100 German military police, (4-Fs in their forties, bottom of the barrel conscripts, not rabid SS), would round up and murder a town of a thousand Jews over the course of one day.
The Germans would force them to sit tightly packed together on town plazas or sporting fields under the watch of only a handful of armed guards. The Germans would then march groups of twenty or thirty at a time at gunpoint into the woods for point-blank executions. A 1-10 ratio means the military police were not worried at all about meeting resistance. The victims were all previously disarmed.
During the Armenian Genocide from 1915-23, two million Christian Turks were exterminated by being marched at gun point into burning deserts with no food or water. The Turkish gun registration laws were enacted in 1911, in the name of “public safety.” The genocide began a few years later, after the Armenians’ firearms were confiscated.
Entire divisions of Russian troops hiked home from WW1 in 1917/18, carrying their rifles and swords and other sidearms. Very early on, Lenin decreed that “public safety” required they all be turned in, under penalty of death. And so the Russian war veterans were disarmed—but not the Communist Party members. Then came the Soviet purges, the Great Terror, the Gulags, and tens of millions of disarmed Russians were murdered.
I’m sorry, but I do NOT trust that our federal government won’t turn as brutally tyrannical as the old USSR at some point in the future, perhaps after an economic crash or other major crisis. The Obama regime already perceives that we “Bitter Clingers” are “reactionaries” who are not only standing in the way of social progress, we are actively blocking it.
That makes us pure Evil, since their plan for a socialist utopia is pure Good. And that means they will ultimately come to feel totally justified in seeking a “final solution to the Bitter Clinger problem,” in the same way that the Turks, Soviets and Nazis did. Can anyone guarantee Americans that tyranny will never visit our shores?
If the socialists in power are scapegoating us as national villains now, what will they do when they have no reason to fear us whatsoever? Did the Turks, Soviets or Nazis treat their despised minorities better, or worse, after disarming them? Think!
And once a despot’s enemies (that’s us) are disarmed and helpless…the temptation grows to simply do away with them. Obama mentor and ghost-autobiographer, the Weather Underground bomber Bill Ayers, stated that they would need to murder ten percent of the American population to achieve their socialist nirvana. Thirty million bitter clingers. Guess who that is?
Don’t relearn this bitter lesson the hard way. Learn from history’s many examples. As it was for the Turkish Armenians, German Jews, Russian Kulaks, Chinese, Ugandans, Guatemalans, Cambodians, Cubans, Rwandans, and on and on, history’s lesson is crystal clear:
Stick to your guns–no matter what!
I think this passage says it all. If we resist, what are they really going to do? What happens when the enforcers are afraid to go out and do their jobs?
“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!”
