History of the world convincingly demonstrates that armies have no problem assaulting "their own people." That was true thousands of years ago, when one tiny tribe of Greeks slaughtered another tiny tribe of Greeks. That was true in the middle ages, when condottieri recruited peasants and urban rabble and then led them to rape and pillage the same villages and the same cities where the mercenaries hailed from (if they could remember those details in drunken haze.) That was also true in all civil wars in all ages.
To get to that point soldiers are trained to not think. If they must think then an image of a fierce enemy is conveniently constructed and presented (see Bill, the Galactic Hero.) With media under control, the dictator can invent any harebrained reason for the war and he will be believed. If 100 DOJ agents had no moral problem with incinerating helpless, surrounded people then 1,000 such groups will have no problem either.
And there is one more handy trick. The soldiers may feel sympathy to the opponent, but that only lasts until first shots are fired. When sodier's buddy falls down with a hole in the head all sympathies fly right out of the window, and the soldier becomes an unthinking machine of revenge. Somewhere in bushes a provocateur is all smiles - his job is well done.
The society is already divided - and with election of Obama 4 years ago it is also cracking along the racial lines. The future of George Zimmerman is pretty dark at this point. If the President simply gives permission to minorities to kill whitey the latter will be either dead or a refugee in no time. Most victims are no fighters; those who are will simply be an excuse to send the troops in. This is what happened in Zimbabwe - large gangs of blacks, well armed and fully supported by Mugabe, attacked and took control of farms that belonged to white farmers. Mass murders were simply ignored, and the white farmers are no more.
You will say "But Zimbabwe is hell on Earth" and that would be also true. It doesn't matter as long as the people in charge can exercise their power of life and death. This is why dictators are in no hurry to abandon their evil ways and declare the age of enlightment. You will find a dictator on every level of power, from the level of a prison cell to the level of a country.
Since takers are not makers, they depend on taking for survival. When taking gets tough you should expect additional taxes, up to the level of confiscation. This is what Communists did in Russia - they took all the grain from peasants, and millions of peasants died. As the anger of the takers grows ("those 1% again stole all our food!1!") you can be sure that there will be hordes of young, aggressive men who, if they "accidentally find" weapons and ammo, will become the Sturm Abteilung of the new regime - a handy gang of provocateurs and murderers, with tacit support and protection of the government. This will be all done under the banner of democracy because "they" now have the numbers and you don't.
I guess you missed posts 45 and 46. Who do you think the rebels are in Syria? Regular soldiers from the Sunni majority who’ve gone off the reservation. And why didn’t highly trained Soviet soldiers obey orders to fire own their own people? Bronze Age Greek villagers fighting each other was the beginning of what would become warfare between nations. It’s true that brigands and gangsters will attack their own people. They’re sociopaths, after all. That’s the exact group that dicatorship recruit their security forces from. You forget that real, “regular” soldiers, whether 1962 Soviet or 2012 American, are not recruited from that demographic. Indeed, they’d be barred from serving (at least in our military). Regular soldiers (and their junior officers and NCOS!) and military veterans in the US hail from precisely the same regions that would be most likely to secede. You’d have a huge meltdown in discipline and mass defections were they asked to attack fellow citizens. You want to go back into history, then tell me how well did Nicholas II, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Nicolae Ceaucescu’s militaries do in preventing their own soldiers from defecting en masse to rebels? And unlike most societies, the United States is flush with deadly weapons and the ammo they require—just check out the sporting goods section of a WalMart. That’s a real wild card right there. And as for Zimbabwe, that’s tribal, sub-Saharan Africa. Comparing that to the US is really apples and oranges.
“Might not be long before we can easily imagine Obama ordering our military to fire on our own people.”
History of the world convincingly demonstrates that armies have no problem assaulting “their own people.”
Got that right. And the US isn’t an exception.
“The Day the U.S. Army Attacked WWI Veterans & their Kids”
“When later discussing the military operation against U.S. World War One Vets at the U.S. capitol, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, later President of the United States, it was “wrong for the Army’s highest-ranking officer to lead an action against fellow American war veterans”.
“Eisenhower was one of MacArthur’s junior aides at the time, and while he said he strongly advised the future World War Two military leader against the attack, it is also true that he OFFICIALLY ENDORSED MacArthur’s conduct,,,”
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november302011/occupy-1933.php
Patton was happy to attack the WWI vets also, so he could get “combat experience.”