fwiw, i personally wrote most of the "rear area protection doctrine" in the late '70s & early '80s (TWO 2-year tours on the faculty) for USAMPS,after we learned the lesson of RVN.
a country CANNOT EVER defeat of well-supported (by the civilian population) guerrilla movement, even with helicopters, gunships,advanced weaponry. period. end of story.(btw, may i remind you that since the 19th Century, that SPAIN, JAPAN, the USA & the PHILLAPINE government have tried & FAILED (miserably, btw) to "put down" the Huk's resistance??? fyi, the Huks NEVER had more than 10K active fighters, but they STILL hold much of "the back country".)
had Lee decided to do precisely what i said, the north would have given up & left dixie within ten years or less, especially if EVERY major industrial city in the north started BURNING. (may i remind you what the Chicago fire did??) YEP, anyone who got "caught" would have faced "a short trial & a quick rope or firing squad".) nonetheless, such guerrilla acts NEVER fail for want of volunteers!!!
fwiw, had the union army decided to "take it out on" the southern civilian population, that too would have backfired on the union & solidified dixie morale/support for the "martyrs".
in the end, the north would have "just gone home" & dixie would have been forever FREE.
free dixie,sw
My credentials are sufficient to realize that guerrilla warfare with the aim of splitting a nation in two pieces is a strategy, not a tactic.
fwiw, i personally wrote most of the "rear area protection doctrine" in the late '70s & early '80s (TWO 2-year tours on the faculty) for USAMPS,after we learned the lesson of RVN.
Anyone can claim any credentials on the internet. Suffice it to say that an obvious minimum prerequisite for authoring official military police doctrine would be the ability to construct an English sentence.
a country CANNOT EVER defeat of well-supported (by the civilian population) guerrilla movement, even with helicopters, gunships,advanced weaponry. period. end of story.
I am an American. The word "cannot" is not a given with me.
.(btw, may i remind you that since the 19th Century, that SPAIN, JAPAN, the USA & the PHILLAPINE government have tried & FAILED (miserably, btw) to "put down" the Huk's resistance??? fyi, the Huks NEVER had more than 10K active fighters, but they STILL hold much of "the back country".)
The value of the Philippine "back country" to the USA, Japan or Spain is considerably smaller than the value of the USA to the USA.
Force and resource commitment varies accordingly.
had Lee decided to do precisely what i said, the north would have given up & left dixie within ten years or less, especially if EVERY major industrial city in the north started BURNING.
Had Lee adopted guerrilla tactics and remained in the North, he would have been hunted down and killed within a few months.
Had Confederate spies started setting fires in Northern cities, anyone with a Southern accent or suspect connections would have found themselves lynched in short order. Such a strategy would have had a very short life span.
Recall the fate of the Lincoln conspirators.
(may i remind you what the Chicago fire did??)
I do remember. The Chicago fire gutted a city inhabited by 300,000 people. Three years after the fire 400,000 people lived there. That should tell you something about how effective a tactic such burnings would have been.
YEP, anyone who got "caught" would have faced "a short trial & a quick rope or firing squad".) nonetheless, such guerrilla acts NEVER fail for want of volunteers!!!
John Bell Hood, one of the bravest and most capable military officers America has ever produced, parted ways with Lee on the question of continuing resistance. He believed in a campaign of ongoing vengeance for the collapse of the Confederacy. But within a month he realized that his dreams of raising an independent command to carry on the fight was drawing almost no takers. So he gave himself up two months after Lee surrendered.
And I guarantee that his failure to raise recruits was not because the people thought Hood was a scam artist or would be an unreliable leader. It is because the will to resist was gone.
fwiw, had the union army decided to "take it out on" the southern civilian population, that too would have backfired on the union & solidified dixie morale/support for the "martyrs".
That's interesting, because Sherman adopted exactly that policy and the locals either scattered or licked his boots.
Missouri got cleaned up of guerrillas in short order too.
in the end, the north would have "just gone home" & dixie would have been forever FREE.
This kind of talk was on many Southern lips in 1865. And then, as now, 99% of it was just talk.
There was no such thing as "going home" anyway. A Union man's home is the Union, from Key West to Seattle, San Diego to Bangor.
Who has that stand watie resume handy?
The Mau Mau uprising. The Malayan uprising. The Philippine uprising of the early 20th century. The Biafra uprising. All put down by the government.