I don't think you're understanding the point. You said that the idea that civilians could keep our government in check is "about 200 years old and largely irrelevant." I'm telling you it's quite relevant, and has happened numerous times in the past 50 years, let alone the past 200. I don't think the point could be any more germane. And it's precisely because the U.S. can't use a lot of its more advanced technology against a resistance using basic weaponry. I agree. The U.S. wasn't going to vaporize the entire area. It's not because we couldn't. It's because we didn't have the will to use our technology to do such a thing.
It is not so much the will, but the need to respect international law. Basic weapons are not going to stop a modern military force. The black hawk down example is a poor example. A small force was sent to apprehend one man, air craft were shot down, and it was a scramble to get the people out. This is hardly an operation to eradicate "insurgents".
If there's a such a thing as "the need to respect international law" why do so many countries fail to respect it? No. There's no such need to respect international law. We respect it because we want to. We ignore it when we want to. Basic weapons DID stop our modern military force. The goal of our forces (and the U.N. I might add) was to remove Aidid and prevent civil war. That goal was not achieved. We lost the will to achieve that goal, turned tail and ran. They did this with small arms, ancient rocket technology, rocks, sticks, improvised bombs...
Ayuh,.... Lesson learned in the last 10 years,... A ragtag group of insurgents kept the US military machine duckin', til they were bought off by Uncle Sam.... I also don't see it happenin',... But I'm thinkin' the rednecks of the US of A could kick as much ass as any Iraqi.... And,... The US armed forces were born right here,... They ain't near as apt to go shootin' their Neighbors.. muchless family...
Nope. I don't think the lesson was learned. We've been laboring under the delusion that there's a such a thing as a civilized war for much longer then 10 years. War doesn't have civilized rules. In fact, war only has one rule. It is: war is decided when one side either no longer has the stomach to fight, or no longer exists. When you try to play war by rules, all you do is drag out the conflict and get more people killed. How many more people would have died if we tried to go house to house on the island of Japan? How many civilians were blown up in the middle east because we decided to (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)foot around waiting for people to shoot at us before we engaged known enemies? How many years do you think it will be before someone is going to have to send substantial troops back into the middle east and stomp some necks to preserve peace rather than win a war? The insurgents have very little discipline, and very little skill with their arms. They typically fire full auto and most rounds go zinging well above the heads of their targets. If they had been using the weapons all their lives, (like a good number of Americans have), our casualty rates would have been much much higher. And still despite the insurgent lack of discipline, and capability, the battle was not won with superior technology alone. We only had the ability to gain control with more boots on the ground. I don't see or want to see an American revolution any time soon either, but that doesn't make the idea outdated. Like I said, it's happening all around us, even to us. There's absolutely no reason to lay down and decide that the American military is good enough, or too strong to ever be able to defend ourselves against. That's the exactly what the founders of this country wanted to prevent. Here's the score. There's more then 75 million armed Americans. Of those, a large percentage of them are proficient with their weapons. They know how to use them. Those 75 million have enough arms to outfit half of America. Even if just 10 percent of them decided to revolt and the rest remained impartial, they'd still have superior numbers compared to the U.S. military or any other invading force. There's no way the U.S. military or any other invading force, could put enough boots on the ground to control the U.S. population if it didn't want to be controlled. Couldn't happen as long as we have the will and guns to fight back with. 1 man with will and a 30-30 is worth 20 with no will and full auto
The discussion is moot. An armed resistance must first organize and that will be the resistance's great weakness. To organize above fire team (4 people) they will have to use modern communications which the gov't will be able to intercept. The resistance will be squashed before it ever gets to the shooting stage.
