5 ms·

Pointless? Every war the US has fought since Vietnam has essentially been a matchup of the full might of the US military against rocks and sticks, and the rocks

by nsxwolf 11y ago

Pointless? Every war the US has fought since Vietnam has essentially been a matchup of the full might of the US military against rocks and sticks, and the rocks and sticks always win. Millions of like minded American citizens could certainly make things difficult for the US military in a guerrilla war.

lispit 11y ago
There's some weird cognitive dissonance going on where many of the people that love to point out that the US military can't possibly succeed against guerrilla combatants in the Middle East are the same people that laugh at "gun nuts" for "thinking their small arms would do anything against the military's tanks, artillery, airstrikes, etc."
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  There's also a failure to acknowledge that some of the military would fight with the gun nuts, not against them.
  - whatok 11y ago
    And the fact that if the military started slaughtering their own citizens with tanks and bombs, um that kinda might not be seen as too positive to the rest of the world.
    - lispit 11y ago
      That's another good bit of cognitive dissonance. I'd wager that many of these same people are aware of and support movements like #BlackLivesMatter, that use social media to spread awareness of instances of police brutality to massive audiences. Yet they never stop to consider how effective those same tactics could be in a theoretical armed resistance. Imagine someone recording a group of teenaged American rebels being slaughtered by the military, the media running with it and getting statements from the bereaved families, further polarizing would-be rebels while sparking dissent amongst the other side, growing lack of respect with the military, etc.
      - notahacker 11y ago
        I don't think the average liberal underestimates the effectiveness of social media, least of all when it comes to publicising the slaughter of American teenagers. It's just the incidences of slaughter they - perhaps optimistically given the US status quo - believe may be reduced through gun controls are actually happening on a not infrequent basis, whereas the Second Civil War scenarios are wildly unlikely fantasy. People believe social media campaigns might work precisely because they don't think that the only thing keeping the US from turning into a fascist police state is consumer weaponry.
        lispit 11y ago
        >It's just the incidences of slaughter they - perhaps optimistically given the US status quo - believe may be reduced through gun controls are actually happening on a not infrequent basis, whereas the Second Civil War scenarios are wildly unlikely fantasy. That's a reasonable opinion, but one I disagree with. A second secession movement and full-blown Civil War will probably never happen, but martial law ordered in response to protest or active resistance of a law is not unthinkable. The risk of death by gun violence in the United States is dwarfed by the risk of death by automobile accident, heart disease, and so on. I would absolutely rather live in a country of ~320 million with a few thousand deaths per year due to gun violence, than in one with no weapons to deter martial law. I'll take a small (blown out of proportion by the media) threat over an existential threat any day. And that's even assuming that you could make gun violence disappear entirely overnight. Revoking access to registered firearms could very well reduce the number of spree shootings, but would do little to affect the black market supply used by criminals in robberies and turf wars, and probably increase the amount of gun violence used in robberies (as criminals would then be sure that no one would be able to resist them).
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        And that's also overstating the fictitious "gun violence", which is conflating public shootings with suicides. Factor that out, and police shootings of felons, and you find auto deaths dwarf shootings, accidental or otherwise
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    Also, being sent against the populace is terrible for military morale -- making your guerrilla force slightly more dangerous can end up having really large knock-on effects as soldiers get pushed into things they're not comfortable with. A lot of people have no problem rounding up a mob, maybe beating them up, and tossing them in jail; a lot of those same people will think twice before saying "We can't go in on the ground... I want to be a part of clearing that mob by bombing it to pulp".
  - douche 11y ago
    Actually, looking at the demographics of the branches of the military that would be most involved in attempting to suppress a home-grown rebellion of gun-owners, it's more than likely that there would be wide-spread mutiny. Or else an exodus of the leadership and rank-and-file soldiery on par with the Southerners that resigned in '61.
- Retric 11y ago
  The troubles in northern Ireland suggest you can have a long term insurgency without losing a country. Of note it was not defeated with military power, but it was also failed in it's long term goals. As such there is no cognitive dissonance as propping up a country is different from crushing all opposition.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Indeed. These people who seem to want violent insurgency as a political right should take a look at how that works out in situations other than the US war of independence. It's usually indecisive with a lot of people getting killed more or less at random. Mind you, last time I ran the numbers, it was safer to be in Belfast during the troubles than in Detroit over the same period.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Personally I don't see any cognitive dissonance in thinking that a messy decades-long guerrilla war would represent both a failure to "export democracy" when taking place overseas and a failure to "defend democracy" if taking place in one's own neighbourhood.
MichaelGG 11y ago
It'd be even worse most likely, as US troops are gonna act much differently domestically and would almost certainly be much more reserved. Gonna be much harder to shoot potential enemies when they literally are your friends (taking a looser, FB-ish value of friendship). Better for the world would just be splitting up the US, like AT&T was. Perhaps 3 or 4 ways? Then you'd have much smaller countries to deal with, easier to make changes and reflect citizens' desires. Plus it'd create some competition, for trade and so on.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > It'd be even worse most likely, as US troops are gonna act much differently domestically and would almost certainly be much more reserved. That's highly optimistic. I would say that history does not generally support the idea that militaries in general, or the US military in particular, are more reserved when dealing with a perceived internal existential threat than they are fighting overseas. > Gonna be much harder to shoot potential enemies when they literally are your friends (taking a looser, FB-ish value of friendship). That's one view. Another view is that its a lot easier to see the enemy as an intolerable foe against whom any means are justified when you don't see them as "loyally fighting for their country" the same as you, just on a different side, but instead as potentially fatally betraying your country. I'd say the history of domestic armed conflicts (including the US Civil War) suggests that the latter effect is often at least as strong as the former.
  - Thimothy 11y ago
    >That's highly optimistic. I would say that history does not generally support the idea that militaries in general, or the US military in particular, are more reserved when dealing with a perceived internal existential threat than they are fighting overseas. That's... Not exactly true. History has actually shown the contrary, WASP are usually very soft on other WASP while bloody on everybody else. Examples: -The US civil war is a perfect sample. I don't think you could find another battle in history but Gettysburg were opposing armies of many tens of thousands fought with just one civil casualty (and an accident, this one). Usually, after a battle is won there is this period of pillaging, raping and general dead and destruction. If you want to see how a real after-civil-war-repression looks like, look at what Cromwell did in Ireland, it's the stuff of nightmares. (Which also supports my argument, because he was very soft on his British opponents). -There is also the anglo-american war of 1812. The British "sacked" Washington, with, again, only 1 (ONE!) casualty. I mean, come on, it's like they weren't even trying. For contrast, look at what a real British occupation looked like at the time with the suppression of the rebellion of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka in 1818. My point: If the US start killing each other seriously, that would be a new in history.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Uncle Ho was prepared to throw any number of people under the bus for a unified Vietnam. Our senior command just didn't understand this or couldn't deal with it. Estimates are a million Vietnamese died between 1950 and 1975. And you understand that the entire plot of "Apocolypse Now" ( which was fiction ) was that Kurtz was prepared to use any means to win, and that this is why he was targeted for assassination? "His methods were... unsound." This led to the Powell Doctrine. In the early-90s Gulf War I, the objective was actually met, although the resulting equilibrium was not stable. Open-ended foreign entanglements are generally bad practice.
- hga 11y ago
  Uncle Ho was prepared to throw any number of people under the bus for a unified Vietnam. Case in point: they had a policy of regularly making battalion strength night attacks on our fixed positions, deliberately sacrificing about a company's worth of men. It worked because it made our commanders unreasonably afraid of venturing outside at night.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    It's still hard to come to grips with even just as an exercise. We had similar difficulties in the Pacific in WWII with the Bushido Code. The reaction there was, shall we say, less restrained. Grim business, founded in a vehement racism as a central operating principle.

by nsxwolf 11y ago

lispit 11y ago

There's some weird cognitive dissonance going on where many of the people that love to point out that the US military can't possibly succeed against guerrilla combatants in the Middle East are the same people that laugh at "gun nuts" for "thinking their small arms would do anything against the military's tanks, artillery, airstrikes, etc."

brandonmenc 11y ago
There's also a failure to acknowledge that some of the military would fight with the gun nuts, not against them.
- whatok 11y ago
  And the fact that if the military started slaughtering their own citizens with tanks and bombs, um that kinda might not be seen as too positive to the rest of the world.
  - lispit 11y ago
    That's another good bit of cognitive dissonance. I'd wager that many of these same people are aware of and support movements like #BlackLivesMatter, that use social media to spread awareness of instances of police brutality to massive audiences. Yet they never stop to consider how effective those same tactics could be in a theoretical armed resistance. Imagine someone recording a group of teenaged American rebels being slaughtered by the military, the media running with it and getting statements from the bereaved families, further polarizing would-be rebels while sparking dissent amongst the other side, growing lack of respect with the military, etc.
    - notahacker 11y ago
      I don't think the average liberal underestimates the effectiveness of social media, least of all when it comes to publicising the slaughter of American teenagers. It's just the incidences of slaughter they - perhaps optimistically given the US status quo - believe may be reduced through gun controls are actually happening on a not infrequent basis, whereas the Second Civil War scenarios are wildly unlikely fantasy. People believe social media campaigns might work precisely because they don't think that the only thing keeping the US from turning into a fascist police state is consumer weaponry.
      - lispit 11y ago
        >It's just the incidences of slaughter they - perhaps optimistically given the US status quo - believe may be reduced through gun controls are actually happening on a not infrequent basis, whereas the Second Civil War scenarios are wildly unlikely fantasy. That's a reasonable opinion, but one I disagree with. A second secession movement and full-blown Civil War will probably never happen, but martial law ordered in response to protest or active resistance of a law is not unthinkable. The risk of death by gun violence in the United States is dwarfed by the risk of death by automobile accident, heart disease, and so on. I would absolutely rather live in a country of ~320 million with a few thousand deaths per year due to gun violence, than in one with no weapons to deter martial law. I'll take a small (blown out of proportion by the media) threat over an existential threat any day. And that's even assuming that you could make gun violence disappear entirely overnight. Revoking access to registered firearms could very well reduce the number of spree shootings, but would do little to affect the black market supply used by criminals in robberies and turf wars, and probably increase the amount of gun violence used in robberies (as criminals would then be sure that no one would be able to resist them).
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        And that's also overstating the fictitious "gun violence", which is conflating public shootings with suicides. Factor that out, and police shootings of felons, and you find auto deaths dwarf shootings, accidental or otherwise
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  Also, being sent against the populace is terrible for military morale -- making your guerrilla force slightly more dangerous can end up having really large knock-on effects as soldiers get pushed into things they're not comfortable with. A lot of people have no problem rounding up a mob, maybe beating them up, and tossing them in jail; a lot of those same people will think twice before saying "We can't go in on the ground... I want to be a part of clearing that mob by bombing it to pulp".
- douche 11y ago
  Actually, looking at the demographics of the branches of the military that would be most involved in attempting to suppress a home-grown rebellion of gun-owners, it's more than likely that there would be wide-spread mutiny. Or else an exodus of the leadership and rank-and-file soldiery on par with the Southerners that resigned in '61.
Retric 11y ago
The troubles in northern Ireland suggest you can have a long term insurgency without losing a country. Of note it was not defeated with military power, but it was also failed in it's long term goals. As such there is no cognitive dissonance as propping up a country is different from crushing all opposition.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Indeed. These people who seem to want violent insurgency as a political right should take a look at how that works out in situations other than the US war of independence. It's usually indecisive with a lot of people getting killed more or less at random. Mind you, last time I ran the numbers, it was safer to be in Belfast during the troubles than in Detroit over the same period.
notahacker 11y ago
Personally I don't see any cognitive dissonance in thinking that a messy decades-long guerrilla war would represent both a failure to "export democracy" when taking place overseas and a failure to "defend democracy" if taking place in one's own neighbourhood.

MichaelGG 11y ago

It'd be even worse most likely, as US troops are gonna act much differently domestically and would almost certainly be much more reserved. Gonna be much harder to shoot potential enemies when they literally are your friends (taking a looser, FB-ish value of friendship). Better for the world would just be splitting up the US, like AT&T was. Perhaps 3 or 4 ways? Then you'd have much smaller countries to deal with, easier to make changes and reflect citizens' desires. Plus it'd create some competition, for trade and so on.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> It'd be even worse most likely, as US troops are gonna act much differently domestically and would almost certainly be much more reserved. That's highly optimistic. I would say that history does not generally support the idea that militaries in general, or the US military in particular, are more reserved when dealing with a perceived internal existential threat than they are fighting overseas. > Gonna be much harder to shoot potential enemies when they literally are your friends (taking a looser, FB-ish value of friendship). That's one view. Another view is that its a lot easier to see the enemy as an intolerable foe against whom any means are justified when you don't see them as "loyally fighting for their country" the same as you, just on a different side, but instead as potentially fatally betraying your country. I'd say the history of domestic armed conflicts (including the US Civil War) suggests that the latter effect is often at least as strong as the former.
- Thimothy 11y ago
  >That's highly optimistic. I would say that history does not generally support the idea that militaries in general, or the US military in particular, are more reserved when dealing with a perceived internal existential threat than they are fighting overseas. That's... Not exactly true. History has actually shown the contrary, WASP are usually very soft on other WASP while bloody on everybody else. Examples: -The US civil war is a perfect sample. I don't think you could find another battle in history but Gettysburg were opposing armies of many tens of thousands fought with just one civil casualty (and an accident, this one). Usually, after a battle is won there is this period of pillaging, raping and general dead and destruction. If you want to see how a real after-civil-war-repression looks like, look at what Cromwell did in Ireland, it's the stuff of nightmares. (Which also supports my argument, because he was very soft on his British opponents). -There is also the anglo-american war of 1812. The British "sacked" Washington, with, again, only 1 (ONE!) casualty. I mean, come on, it's like they weren't even trying. For contrast, look at what a real British occupation looked like at the time with the suppression of the rebellion of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka in 1818. My point: If the US start killing each other seriously, that would be a new in history.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

Uncle Ho was prepared to throw any number of people under the bus for a unified Vietnam. Our senior command just didn't understand this or couldn't deal with it. Estimates are a million Vietnamese died between 1950 and 1975. And you understand that the entire plot of "Apocolypse Now" ( which was fiction ) was that Kurtz was prepared to use any means to win, and that this is why he was targeted for assassination? "His methods were... unsound." This led to the Powell Doctrine. In the early-90s Gulf War I, the objective was actually met, although the resulting equilibrium was not stable. Open-ended foreign entanglements are generally bad practice.

hga 11y ago
Uncle Ho was prepared to throw any number of people under the bus for a unified Vietnam. Case in point: they had a policy of regularly making battalion strength night attacks on our fixed positions, deliberately sacrificing about a company's worth of men. It worked because it made our commanders unreasonably afraid of venturing outside at night.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  It's still hard to come to grips with even just as an exercise. We had similar difficulties in the Pacific in WWII with the Bushido Code. The reaction there was, shall we say, less restrained. Grim business, founded in a vehement racism as a central operating principle.