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If the US government decided to attack its own citizens on American land, I'd expect they wouldn't be too worried about waging a humane war. So perhaps the more

If the US government decided to attack its own citizens on American land, I'd expect they wouldn't be too worried about waging a humane war. So perhaps the more educational recent example here is Aleppo. The rebels haven't lost... But the cost is most definitely not heaviest on the Syrian government. As for the Y2K/polio analogy... I'm not really following, to be honest. You make an extraordinary assertion ("guns prevent governments from waging war on their people") that's arguably provably false (Colombia should be example enough that an armed and organized force is hardly sufficient to prevent the government's continued attack---at best it ensures a split nation and years of warfare and strife). You present readings that show governments have waged war on an unarmed citizenry as proof that they won't wage war on an armed citizenry, but that's not proof---it's just not disproof. You can say that it's impossible to prove it (because it's a negative), but then all you can do is disprove it (which I'd say the world has already done).

CamperBob2 10y ago
I hear what you're saying, don't get me wrong. It sounds like you're in a better position to comment on the situation in Colombia if nothing else. But we're both playing some simplistic hands here. As soon as other players turn a local conflict into a proxy war -- as the Russians and US are in danger of doing in Syria and as the US drug warriors have done in Columbia -- life gets more complicated. Still, I'd argue that you're better off in such situations if you haven't delegated all of the responsibility for protecting yourself and your family and property to a government who may or may not have other interests in mind. Even the American Revolution was basically a proxy war between England and the continental powers, for that matter. But when the dust settled, you didn't see the French moving in to claim their just rewards. As the apocryphal quote credited to Yamamoto goes, "There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." We were then, as we are now, more trouble to mess with than we're worth. That's the kind of relationship that many American citizens like to maintain with their own government. I don't see that as a bad thing.

CamperBob2 10y ago

I hear what you're saying, don't get me wrong. It sounds like you're in a better position to comment on the situation in Colombia if nothing else. But we're both playing some simplistic hands here. As soon as other players turn a local conflict into a proxy war -- as the Russians and US are in danger of doing in Syria and as the US drug warriors have done in Columbia -- life gets more complicated. Still, I'd argue that you're better off in such situations if you haven't delegated all of the responsibility for protecting yourself and your family and property to a government who may or may not have other interests in mind. Even the American Revolution was basically a proxy war between England and the continental powers, for that matter. But when the dust settled, you didn't see the French moving in to claim their just rewards. As the apocryphal quote credited to Yamamoto goes, "There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." We were then, as we are now, more trouble to mess with than we're worth. That's the kind of relationship that many American citizens like to maintain with their own government. I don't see that as a bad thing.