this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
1092 points (94.8% liked)
Political Memes
5405 readers
3970 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Idiot right-wing gun-lovers who actively support the kind of fascism we need to be fighting aside...
The idea isn't to fight tanks and jets with rifles head-on. The idea is that an anonymous armed insurgency is really hard to defeat. Anti-armor vehicles work great against armor, but trying to use them on small insurgents made up of random individuals is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer: you do a lot of collateral damage but the actual target is fine.
Overconfidence in stealth jets and aircraft carriers is why Iraq and Afghanistan turned into decades-long engagements before we'd just gave up and left. The regular Iraqi army was defeated in under 2 weeks, but we still lost the war.
And if it were to happen here, the government would also have to worry a lot more about troops unwilling to kill fellow citizens, unlike in the middle east where they were all strangers speaking a different language.
Finally someone else who realizes telling the military to carpet bomb cities has never worked against an insurgency except maybe in Chechnya, but it's hard to call that an ideal win.
Do you really see the majority of Texans who want secession digging out trenches and caves and living in them, and providing all of their own food and supplies, though? The people of Afghanistan and Vietnam did not live comfortably in their homes with all the amenities while they were fighting their guerilla wars.
I don't think Texans have anywhere near the same mental fortitude as those people. I see them giving up very quickly after living with no power in a cave somewhere.
Neither of us know what other people can or would do.
I know the kind of conditions that the people of Vietnam and Afghanistan were raised and survived in were many many times harder than the conditions that Texans have lived in their whole lives. You should too if you have paid attention to your education on world history.
Really not that hard to understand that people who grew up in third world countries are better equipped to deal with surviving off of the land and living with no amenities than people that grew up in first world countries.
I don't know that adversity makes people stronger. I know strong people who haven't faced adversity, I've faced a little bit but remained weak. It's a common mentality, but I just don't have any reason to believe its true.
We can have a pretty damn good clue based on how they live and behave day-to-day.
The US army is very good at that. That’s the kind of conflict they’ve been fighting since Vietnam. If you think a distributed guerrilla army can stand against the US military on their own soil, you’re delusional.
I’m not talking about tanks and jets. That’s so last century. That’s not how wars are fought now. There’s just no way homegrown militias would have any hope against the US military in their midst. Ask anyone enlisted in any branch of the military. I promise they’ll tell you that’s a pipe dream.
You mean the military that's consistently failed to win those kind of conflicts?
The US military was driven out of Iraq and Afghanistan and that's with pretty much 100% troop loyalty. You start ordering the military to shoot Americans on American soil they won't even have that.
In the US Civil War, this exact scenario played out. All it took was first blood, and even family members on opposite sides fought each other.
US soldiers will definitely kill our own. We saw this during the 70's with National Guard units shooting Kent State students. We see it today with our police forces. If the opposition can be cast as the villain, soldiers will fight.
Sure, but the American army can (with the almost assured ok from Mexico) literally surround Texas and just starve them out. What exactly is going to get through the US Navy, Army, and Air Force into Texas if they don't want it to? It'll be a guerrilla army against the American Military that literally can fly any operation they want 30 seconds to and from target. The US has one of the most insanely good logistical abilities in history, around the world, imagine inside their own borders. What exactly are Texas Militias going to do? Approach the borders and take pot shots? The second they try to get through a drone army flying 24/7 will either take them out themselves or constantly send locations to artillery, tanks, etc. All the AR-15/M16/M416/etc in the world won't help you against what the American Military has on offer.
I think you’re missing the point that it wouldn’t be a war, it would be a police action. The local national guards would shut that shit down quickly.
If you think your small arms could stand against the US military on its own turf, you’re hilariously mistaken. I get that you want to believe that’s what gives you your freedoms, but come on. Nobody who actually understands how that would play out takes those dreams seriously.
You have guns because they fulfill your fantasies, not because that’s in any way realistic.
Objectively then, clearly 2A is deficient. The people need more arms to keep oppressive governments in check.
No, the 2A wasn’t meant for individual people to keep arms for that reason. It was written before the US had any sort of army (and several of the founders were actually against a national standing army), with the point being each state would keep enough arms and accoutrements and train the people to be ready to be called up to defend their state.
It was meant to create something like what became the National Guard.
The Supreme Court changed that definition in 2002 with the Heller decision, so now it’s even further removed from its original meaning. I suppose that makes it deficient if you’re reading in an original meaning it never had in the first place.
To be honest, we "lost" those wars because of our intolerance for splash damage. We often knew where the insurgents were, but to take them out would mean killing a lot of civilians. We had to wait until they were in a place where the collateral damage was minimal, even if it meant they got away. Israel and Russia don't seem to have this problem, but look at where it's landed them on the stage of world opinion.
People that believe in a "surgical" war are why we lose. We would have prevailed in an all out conflict where civilian casualties are acceptable. We have the firepower. But that might be viewed as genocide, which is unacceptable.
This is why the US is involved in so many conflicts. War is supposed to be terrible, and therefore avoided by all sides. When rules are in play, the weaker side believes they can win by hiding among civilians. This is the insurgents' playbook - let the other side play by the rules, and when they don't, scream foul. Never mind that combatants hiding among civilians is also against the rules.
When you fight an insurgency with cruel force, especially with disregard for civilian casualties, all you do is further the circumstances that led to the insurgency in the first place. These groups are recruiting for a fight against a foreign army. If said army just brutally killed your innocent brothers and sisters, you are a hell of a lot more likely to get radicalized and join. It's certainly no recipe for post-conflict stability.
This is what is so absurd about Israel's war right now, and it was absurd about the US' war too. And I disagree that the US would've "won" if it was "ok with more splash damage".
What is your solution then? How do you deal with an opposing force that uses human shields?
Expose it, mock it, surgical strike which definitely can be possible. And sometimes, when the opposing force isn't a threat to anyone but the human shields, yet the human shields support the opposing force, then you can just maybe give them that autonomy sometimes.
Unfortunately there are few cases where the group in question isn't a threat. By your plan, the US should allow regions to secede if that is their wish. They won't be a threat except to their own residents, who have shown their support by electing the officials seeking secession.
Constitutionally probably not possible, but in principle I think anyone should be able to secede.
Pure grade copium right here.