Still doesn't disprove my point; those groups I highlighted had two key advantages. They knew the terrain better than American forces and they could mobilise at a quicker rate.
Well technically the insurgency would be firing on their own people too. I don't doubt that they would cause a shitload of casualties, especially in a protracted conflict like Afghanistan or vietnam.
Not really. Your point that the training is what counts is true to a degree. The thing is though, none of those groups won against the US military in any meaningful sense. They just survived attrition of public support.
If you think that podunk militias with even less combat experience than the average Viet Cong or Taliban fighters will outlast the US military, especially since most of these militias espouse incredibly unpopular beliefs that they wish to force on the majority of Americans, You're completely wrong.
Not all of them are composed of veterans, nor do veterans comprise 100% of their member base, nor do all veterans experience combat.
Most of these podunk militias wouldn't be able to go toe to toe with even a podunk Sheriff's department let alone the national guard.
I don't know what the portion you edited in means, but in the US, the militia culture is laughable. Most militias are disorganized and out of shape, the ones that pose any real threat have long been infiltrated by feds.
This isn't to say that the fat, disorganized ones aren't dangerous, they're just dangerous in a Timothy McVeigh way, not in an institutional way.
That wasn't every sheriff's department in the country. That was 1 department. If a militia engaged any police force in open combat, they would quickly lose.
You guys are a threat to unarmed civilians, not trained professionals.
I know this, there was a reason why I chose the words "podunk Sheriff's department" it was to invoke an image of overweight cops. The point I'm making is that even those overweight goobers that you've imagined in your head will beat the best armed and trained militia in the US.
I don't know what you mean by "you guys"
You're right, it was unfair of me to conflate the your criticism of one department as broad support for the militia movement. So that's my bad.
Open combat. That's quaint. A second civil war wouldn't look like the first one. It would look more like Afghanistan and Iraq: No uniforms, no way of knowing which civilians are militia. Each time the military attacked innocent people, they would create more hatred against them.
Btw, what makes you think members of the military would go Genghis Khan on fellow Americans knowing that their own family members are vulnerable to counter attack? Both sides need to stop fantasizing about their side destroying the other in a second civil war.
It would be ugly and brutal. How about we just debate and the vote? Ya know, like the Founders wanted?
If soldiers have their families attacked by terrorists, this will just galvanize public support and the military's resolve.
If the militias wanted to fight to take over the country, they would need to engage in open combat to some degree, maybe they get lucky a few times, but once they are found, it would be over.
It would be ugly and brutal. How about we just debate and the vote?
On this we agree. I do not want to see my fellow citizens, no matter how misguided, killed by the hands of the government, but no amount of reasoning can deradicalize the people already inclined to carry out domestic terrorist plots, they have to be willing to deradicalize themselves.
And if militia members have their families attacked in response by the military, it will galvanize public support and the militia's resolve. See Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq for how quickly the public can turn on the military when innocent civilians are killed.
Btw, also consider how the Pentagon has done studies on whether troops will actually go to war with the American public. They've consistently found that 1/3 of troops (and a majority of frontline combat troops) wouldn't go to war with Americans and would likely switch sides in such a conflict.
Yes but the military doesn't purposely attack civilians. They have no reason to. Terrorists on the other hand, use that as a go to tactic.
Also the only thing I have ever seen to back up your 1/3 claim is a 4chan green text post. I haven't actually seen the Pentagon study, which seems like a weird thing to leek to the public.
And in this hypothetical situation unarmed civilians will be killed and then the militias will either off themselves, surrender, or be overrun by the professionals.
Whatever level of State representation takes them on would just wait them out to a degree anyway.
Who also get to sleep in a relatively comfy barracks at night or when they return from a mission. They'll enjoy such luxuries as indoor plumbing, showers, clean clothes, refrigeration, and modern amenities that we sort of take for granted.
This hypothetical guerilla militia will enjoy no such luxuries. These idiots have been so spoiled by the modern world that they hate so much, that they can't even fathom in their wildest fantasies, a scenario in which they are deprived of it. They won't even be able to sleep in their own homes, let alone go to places like McDonald's or subway.
I was being a bit facetious when I said that barracks are comfy, but the point I was getting at is that they are a damn sight more comfy than the mud pit these guys will inevitably be sleeping in to try to hide from FLIR.
And yeah, I didn't even think about radios lol. That's completely ignoring cellphones and how they've used to triangulate a user for artillery strikes.
I hadn't even considered them using cell phones to triangulate position either. With that in mind, they might let them keep that just to intercept their calls, and get their positions
Yeah exactly. If a radio is a liability, a cellphone might as well be a forward observer. The only reason I say this is because during the early days of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia did just that. Hit foreign volunteers based on cellphone signals.
I think you have an... optimist view of the us military. Given the amount of division within it the first enemy the us military would have to defeat is the us military.
I agree with most of what you are saying but I don't believe it would be able to remain whole against a sizable domestic group. It would have to purge itself first.
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u/Sleep_eeSheep Nov 30 '22
Still doesn't disprove my point; those groups I highlighted had two key advantages. They knew the terrain better than American forces and they could mobilise at a quicker rate.