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Yeah, that totally worked in Afghanistan.

• shadowgovt 6y ago
  A projected tight-goal military campaign is a poor comparison for a civil war on home soil. The US was held back by international norms in Afghanistan. International norms tend to be softer on intervention for internal conflicts (and the primary source of muscle for such intervention is usually the US; not clear who would step in to keep a US deploying its own army against its own citizenry from committing as many war crimes as it finds necessary to suppress uprising). Contrast with how the US actually fought a civil war, which included 13 massacres and a civilian-targeted slash-and-burn campaign to break the morale of the Confederacy by making the tangible cost of the war felt by the citizenry supporting the military. Ultimately, you can't rebel from a city reduced to bedrock by a nuclear weapon, and the US has a lot of isolated cities that a hypothetical internal military-engaged civil war could use as an example. The tool that holds the US back from military coup is good military and civilian leadership and the ultimate benefit not being outweighed by the cost (someone who wants political power can work with the existing systems to get elected, or get someone elected who aligns with their worldview). The Second Amendment was not a bad idea, but its goals didn't really bear out in practice (other than, perhaps, creating the doctrinal guardrails that encouraged creation of the National Guard. And even the Guard is ultimately under Federal control, thanks to the laws from '86 and '07).