I missed the staff meeting but the minutes show Gunner
wrote back on Thu, 21 Apr 2005 16:05:26 GMT
in rec.crafts.metalworking :
On 21 Apr 2005 06:47:52 -0700, jim rozen
wrote:

In article , Gunner says...

Never think, that a rebel force, composed of motivated, vengeful,
citizens, many of whom are trained veterans, will fight a set piece
battle against technologically superior forces in a rural area.

Thank you. You are correct. You have just described the situation
in Iraq to within an iota.


Indeed. On the other hand..if the non rebel citizens actively resist
the rebels...there is not a chance in hell of the rebels succeeding.
Hence one never alienates the people you hide within.

It's a standard bell curve. Five sigmas over from mu are the "active
participants", four sigmas over are the active supporters, 3: the passive
supporters, and two sigs either side of mu, could care less. The trick is
to get the curve to move one sigma in your direction. So that their
support falls off, and your's increases. It is a small percentile shift,
more than a massive transformation. That is to say, fewer of their active
participants want to participate, but they'll still support them, fewer of
their active supporters continue to be active, some of their passive
support becomes "undecided", while some of the undecided become your
passive support, your passive supporters become active, and some of your
active supporters become participants. Politics, revolutions, wars, sales
campaigns, all follow this basic outline.


See the article the other day where the Marines heard a firelight and
found groups of regular Joe Iraqis hunting down and killing
insurgents? The trend is apparently continuing and growing all across
Iraq.

The Iraqis know they are now more in control, and are moving on that
bell curve to "Iraqi Nationalism", where "at worse", they are indifferent
to what the government does, because they know it won't hurt them.

And I do think you are correct in the domestic implications, BTW.
100%.

Jim

The War College and other groups have war gamed such scenarios many
many times. For the most part..the Government always loses. Until
they removed the firearms from the citizens. Then the Government
nearly always wins.

Food for thought.

I'm not very hungry, for some reason.

I can war game it in my head. It won't be pretty, it won't be
televised, and no matter what the outcome is called, or who 'wins', it
won't be the Republic which I was born into. (Not that this is exactly the
Republic I was born into, either, but that is a different issue.)


tschus
pyotr




--
pyotr filipivich.
as an explaination for the decline in the US's tech edge, James
Niccol wrote "It used to be that the USA was pretty good at
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."