This is not normal - A guide to what the next president will have to unwind

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RhodesianSon said:
Asymmetrical warfare fought on US soil would be bloody to the point of making the breakup of Yugoslavia look like a game of two hand touch football. The night of the US military is pretty useless against an insurgency, because the big bombs create big collateral damage. And as soon as the feds have started shelling American cities, raid a wrong house, run over a civilian, etc. the people who used to be supportive of the feds, and those who were apathetic about them, start becoming sympathetic to the insurgents. We saw it happen again and again in Iraq. Every good counter insurgency expert knows you don’t win with overwhelming force, but that’s what big army does best, and that’s why big army hasn’t ever beaten an insurgency. And probably never will.

I fought the Iraqi army, I fought Shia militias, and I fought Saddams paramilitary. Tactically we were superior, yet we still lost that war.
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Fair enough, as you’ve got much more hands-on experience than I (that is, none). I wasn’t imagining shelling cities and tanks rolling, for my part; more like drone surveillance and trained snipers with cutting-edge equipment.
 
That stuff does work. But that’s not what a conventional military is trained to do. If you’re interested I highly recommend the book fiasco on the Iraq war. It mostly covers the political and strategic failings of the Bush administration, how those failings created the insurgency, and how the army failed to respond. The last part being the most pertinent to this discussion but the whole book is good to read for an understanding of that period of American history.
 
RhodesianSon said:
I fought the Iraqi army, I fought Shia militias, and I fought Saddams paramilitary. Tactically we were superior, yet we still lost that war.
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Well, ever since Vietnam we haven’t really known what victory was in the conflicts we got involved in, so, it’s hard to “win” when you don’t know what the objective really is.

All the government has to do is stop the sale of ammunition and explosives to civilians and the rebellion will die down in a few months.

You’re right, the civilian population wouldn’t have an appetite for air strikes and artillery missions on American cities.
 
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PaulinVA said:
Well, ever since Vietnam we haven’t really known what victory was in the conflicts we got involved in, so, it’s hard to “win” when you don’t know what the objective really is.
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True enough
PaulinVA said:
All the government has to do is stop the sale of ammunition and explosives to civilians and the rebellion will die down in a few months.
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I think many foreign governments would see this as an opportunity to weaken America, and reset the global stage. Russia, France, Germany, and China in particular.

The only real obstacle for them would be getting past the US navy. Which admittedly would pose a substantial impediment.
 
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RhodesianSon said:
The only real obstacle for them would be getting past the US navy.
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Actually, you may be right that the bigger threat during any rebellion/insurrection/civil strife/civil war is outside actors coming in and having their way with the US.
 
Not only that, but when you look at a map of the US, there’s a lot of choke points on our economy that can be exploited by small scale attacks. Our society is heavily reliant on internet and our power grid is extremely degraded. I have a friend who works for a major power company and they did their annual training for what’s called a black start recently, meaning, large parts of the power grid have shut down for whatever reason and have to be restarted from scratch basically, not nationwide but in a given geographic area. Long story short the outlook wasn’t good, because too many of the plants with the capability have been shut down.
 
That is probably the same observation that was made about a bunch of untrained colonials contemplating action against the greatest military power of its time… around 1776.
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I hate to bring the discussion to this, but the Brit in me would like to point out that the British were fighting the French, Spanish and at a later point the Dutch as well as the Americans. They were outmatched in the only real strength they had, which was their navy. The American revolution wasn’t really a case of some plucky colonists fighting a superpower - they had help from major powers that were rivals to the British.
 
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The biggest problem is the wind power farce. Wind mills for power generation on any meaningful scale are worthless. They have to be shut off and tethered when wind is too high to stop them beating themselves to death, and right about the time they’ve generated enough power to break even on their initial cost, they need replaced. But this is a whole ‘nother topic.
 
To be fair in the last 250 years, the following has happened.
  1. We lost in Vietnam despite having overwhelming advantages in communications, artillery, infantry, armor, naval power, air power, logistics, budget.
  2. On a grand scale, our “successes” in Iraq and Afghanistan will only last as long American troops remain in those countries in overwhelming force.
The US government does not do well at counterinsurgency while having secured logistics chains and a rear area, against an opponent that has access to only basic small arms and IEDs. If the current low-grade civil war heats up, whatever administration takes power will not have even those advantages.
 
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Behold!​

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
Mighty eagle rule alone.
Liberator claim the throne.
Lion from the northern land,
Take the scepter from its hand.
 
My point was that the colonials were for the most part, untrained and ill-equipped yet went up against what was arguably the most powerful and efficient military of the time. It was in reply to a comment that the citizen cannot take up arms today because the regular forces are too powerful.
 
I get the sentiment. But the key factor is that the untrained colonials also got massacred every time when they tried to use conventional tactics. Any insurgency is only effective when backed up with foreign aid.
 
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All the same, the Confederacy might have won the Civil War but for a very small turn of events at Gettysburg. Had they won that one, they likely would have taken Washington, which would have been the end.
 
That was a more peer to peer conflict than an insurgency. But I’d also contest they ever had a chance at winning. They didn’t have the population, logistics, or manufacturing base to win, however, they could have if Britain had intervened. But they didn’t.
 
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