Gunner wrote:
On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 02:09:38 -0400, Kirk Gordon
wrote:


If you were a chess player, I suspect you'd sacrifice your queen to
capture one of my pawns, and then claim that you'd won a great victory
by hurting me and teaching me a lesson. Sebsequent moves might
demonstrate otherwise.

KG


Repost from another newsgroup:

A few shots are fired at an APC, on a rainy Friday night.

major snip

Like I said, sentiments color our view of things.

And you're missing the point. If urban guerillas, and farmers in
the midwest, and former veterans, and military deserters, and all those
other people you mentioned, all got on the same page at the same time,
and could actually do even a tiny fraction of the stuff you describe...

Then they wouldn't need to. If that many diverse people ever even
came CLOSE to agreeing on anything at all, they'd be the biggest,
strongest, most potent voting block this country's ever seen, and they
could scrap the government without ever firing a shot. Or, if you
really don't believe in the power of voting, then all those people would
be a huge, potent, coherent economic force, and could STILL scrap and
replace the government without ever firing a shot.

And if they CAN'T all get together and agree about where to spend
their money, or how to cast their votes, then they're surely not going
to be coordinated or cooperative when it comes to something as difficult
and dangerous as armed rebellion. The most they'd accomplish would be
localized, periodic spasms of anarchy, with disparate rebel groups
spending as much time shooting at each other as they spent shooting at
police or federal troops. Take a look at Afghanistan - before the US
invasion - for a perfect example of how that works.

Or take a look at any urban area where the "drug lords" seem to have
control. Rather than getting together to drive the cops our of their
neighborhoods, so they can run things themselves, gang members kill one
another, and only occasionally shoot a cop who happens to get in the
way. That's anarchy on a pitifully small scale, but it doesn't even
come close to effective rebellion.

Of course, there ARE people who like the idea of anarchy, and who
harbor deep, unadmitted feelings of self hatred, and hatred for humanity
in general, and who like the thought of things going as wrong as
possible, just so everybody gets to hurt and bleed. In some minds,
that's better than if things go well and smoothly. That's what
terrorism is about, in some ways. I suspect it's what drives people
like Ted Kaszinski, or Tim McVeigh, or Dillon Kliebold, and others.

But just because those people exist, and sometimes get in a good
shot or two, doesn't make them any kind of real or serious threat.
Hell, 19 trained fanatics, supported by a substantial and well funded
international organization, got in the best shots ever on September 11th
of 2001; and that didn't even make a serious dent in the real stability
of our country our our government.

And, to get back to your earlier post: There were two main reasons
why those rebels at Lexington, Massachusetts didn't just die and
disappear into history's trash can. First, they DIDN'T represent just a
small band of malcontents. Their sentiments WERE consistent (for one of
the VERY few times in history) with a substantial portion (maybe even a
real majority) of the entire population of the American colonies. They
WERE in a position of power and control that the British simply didn't
realize. The fact that those rebels couldn't change their government by
voting was the only reason they had to do any shooting at all. Second,
those rebels lived in a time when the weapons available to governments
and armies were little different from what any civilian could own.
Except on the seas, where warships were a special factor, a shooting
match between redcoats and rebels was pretty much a fair fight, with the
outcome determined more by sheer numbers and determination than by
technology or armaments.

BOTH of those reasons stopped working a long, long time ago.

The world changes, Gunner. Sensible people have to change their
thoughts, or they find themselves hopelessly outgunned in the struggle
to understand and deal with reality.

"That which does not kill you,
has made a huge tactical error"

I'll say this again, just for effect. Sentiments color our
viewpoints. If you believe that it's dangerous and foolish for an enemy
to hurt or wound you, but to leave you alive so you can fight another
day, then what does it mean, really, if rebels only wound an armed
government, or if they only inflict localized bits of pain and
suffering, without actually crushing the government to death in the very
first encounter? I have this cartoonish vision of a military commander,
sitting atop a tank, at the head of a column of tanks that have been
gathered at the recently reclaimed Presidio. The comander spends a
moment looking over his forces. Then he watches helicopters circle in
and out of the columns of smoke rising from what used to be Oakland,
across the bay. Then he turns to survey the city of San Francisco,
spread out like a map in front of him. And when he's done looking
around, and it's time to order his troops into action, he says to
himself, and to the unseen rebels he's about to destroy, "You kicked us.
You bit us. You hurt and bloodied us. But we're still here. And
we're NOT in a good mood. You should have used suicide attacks, instead
of thinking you could fight us and win. At least if you'd committed
suicide, you wouldn't have to see what happens next."

You can dream all you want, Gunner. But rebellion is a much more
difficult, much more complex, and much more intricate game than it was a
couple centuries ago. In a way, I suspect that's WHY we feel such
reverence for those rebels from long ago. They lived in a time when
things were simpler, and when a small number of brave people COULD make
a difference with only their courage and their muskets. But making a
difference today takes much, MUCH more. It's a shame, maybe. But it's
still the truth.

KG