"Pete C." wrote in message
ster.com...

Ed Huntress wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in message
ster.com...

Ed Huntress wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in message
ster.com...

Ed Huntress wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in message
ster.com...

Ed Huntress wrote:

"RBnDFW" wrote in message
...
Don Foreman wrote:
On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:51:25 -0400, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:

I will be watching with interest, and with a lot of
distance.
While I
support liberty, and the Constitution, I'm also not
interested
in
challenging the power of the US Government.

Challenge of the government is essential to democracy. Fear
of
retribution for challenge of government is clear evidence of
submission to and acceptance of tyranny.

Very well put, don.

That's not to say that challenges should be by fire. That's
revolution
or anarchy, doomed to fail against vastly superior force
unless
done
with considerably more coordination and fieldcraft than is
evident
among noisy dissidents clamoring for attention or trolling on
usenet.

There was a time about 200 years ago that a rabble assembled
into
a
formidable force.

That was around the time that George Washington marched 16,000
federalized
militiamen into western PA, put down the Whiskey Rebellion, and
indicted
a
bunch of them for treason, wasn't it?

Are you wishing for a repeat?

--
Ed Huntress

Say what you want about your beloved founders, constitution,
laws,
etc.,

Thank you, I will. I think very highly of them -- unlike the
phonies
here
who make up fantastical tales about endless usurpations and create
fantasies
for themselves of becoming terrorists from within.

but having watched world events in recent years, can you honestly
say
that you think the US government could withstand a home-soil
insurgency
of even 10,000 (0.001% of the population) coordinated, committed
insurgents? I'm not so sure.

Yes. The Sons of Timothy McVeigh would find out in a hurry that
most
of
us
would do everything we could to help wipe them out. Out-of-shape
blowhards,
largely ignorant, stupid, and delusional, and much too impressed
with
their
own skills and abilities, the "insurgents" would never have a
chance
to
coordinate before they were found out and suppressed. And their
commitment
would collapse in a heartbeat when they saw the trouble they'd
unleashed.

That's the reality.

The reality is that the US has completely lost the national
cohesiveness
that allowed it to win WWII, which is why we have essentially lost
every
war since then and are loosing the two or three we are currently
bogged
down in.

In the time since WWII, a lot has been learned about waging an
asymmetric war, except how to effectively counter one. We've been
fighting an asymmetric war in Iraq and Afghanistan for quite some
time
now and not really making much progress.

Iraq / Afghanistan is an asymmetric war on foreign soil where our
troops
have no personal loyalties. As we've seen trying to get Iraqi and
Afghan
troops mustered to support their own governments, personal loyalties
are
a big problem in fighting an asymmetric war on your own home soil.

We have also seen that various foreign countries are quite willing
to
support such an insurgency if it seems to further their aims. The US
has
of course done the exact same thing in the past, supporting such
groups
as the Talliban when it seemed to further our aims in fighting a
proxy
war with Russia.

You like to point to a few kooks like McVeigh and convince yourself
that
all potential internal threats are of that ilk, but I don't see that
as
being the case. If you look at the many cases of attacks in the US
by
environmental or animal rights terrorists, you find a very different
picture of perpetrators who blend in, who have supporters who will
assist them and who in a great many cases have not been identified
or
prosecuted.

It is important to note that most of the perpetrators of the
environmental and animal terrorism fit closely with the profile of
the
terrorists and insurgents you see in Iraq and Afghanistan, young,
angry
and disillusioned and with a cause they have convinced themselves
justifies violent attacks.

I think the most likely source of an insurgency is not from
geriatric
anti-government ranters on newsgroups, but rather from a relatively
young group with a religious or religion like ideology.

The animals rightists have been rattling their swords for 40 years. So
far,
the republic remains safe from them.

The other groups are something like them -- mumblers and grumblers,
with
a
few freaks among them who do something violent, but mostly without a
lot
of
brains, and 'way short on balls.

I see you missed or chose to ignore the substance of what I wrote.
Head-in-sand has been proven to be an ineffective strategy.

I'm sorry Pete, but the ideas relating to what the US might face were so
weird and off-the-wall that I thought it would be better not to tell you
what I think about it.

It sounds like you're anticipating an asymmetric war with home-grown
terrorists and youth death squads that are organizing in church basements
as
we speak.

Interesting since that is exactly the situation you have in the middle
east, yet you think somehow it couldn't happen here.

It's bizarre that you think your fellow Americans are as vulnerable to
superstitious nonsense and value life as little as the members of Al Queda,
and would form death squads to cleanse the country for the True Believers.

If you believe that, you must not think very much of your countrymen. You
certainly wouldn't trust them to own guns. Are you sure you're in the right
country here, Pete?



The short take is that I think you guys have lost a few of your marbles.

And I think you are blinding yourself to possibilities you don't want to
consider.

I'm working on more likely scenarios, like an invasion from Alpha Centauri.

--
Ed Huntress