Posted on 08/08/2012 4:50:24 PM PDT by EveningStar
Imagine Tea Party extremists seizing control of a South Carolina town and the Army being sent in to crush the rebellion. This farcical vision is now part of the discussion in professional military circles.
At issue is an article in the respected Small Wars Journal titled “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
All command authority is from the commander-in-chief.
Absolutely correct.
It is one of many reasons why the citizens of our nation have a 2nd amendment.
Now to order a howitzer and a chain gun?/s
Sounds like GAC reincarnated.
That's entirely true, and to be fair, your point was that in CWII, there would be no ROE. That is largely correct. Once we get there, the game will change.
My point (and that of this article) was directed at the COIN aspects of the use of military force within CONUS. What wasn't explicitly mentioned, and should have been, is that this would likely be a transitional phase into a full scale civil war. You are exactly right in that the social mechanics behind the tight ROE would fall apart and the everything would likely go sideways. Still, how the initial uprising occurs, how it is responded to, and how the events are viewed by the public will set the fault line for how the earth breaks apart.
What the authors did was to sidestep this gigantic, looming concern by engineering an 'obvious racist villain' line in their story. No doubt they found this to be morally reassuring and uplifting way to write what is otherwise a disturbing scenario. Even if there was a 'break', it would be a full civil war but at 5% to 95% rate. The bad guys would be carefully distilled from the rest of society from the get go. Easy peasy. This is a comically simplistic view of counterinsurgency, where real insurgents blend in with and are supported by the people to an alarming degree. Reducing them to cackling cartoon villains is so colossally wrong-headed it brings great clarity as to how we wound up ten years into a dead end fight in Afghanistan.
Sadly, this inclination towards fantasy-based thinking prevents them from seeing the real danger of picking fights with strangers. They may wind up in a war when they merely wanted to deliver a beatdown. It also prevents them from considering that how the initial flare up starts and is handled will set the stage for the following conflict.
An excellent, but possibly fatally flawed analysis.
You are assuming the goal is not to destroy the United States.
It was obvious even before the ‘08 election that the goal was to destroy freedom, to destroy Western Civilization, and most of all to destroy this country, to turn it into a third-world socialist dungheap.
I’ll live...
Well, they pretty much spelled it out:
A well regulated (controlled) militia (army) being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Everyone tries to contort the Second to mean this or that, but the whole idea was that the people would retain power over the army by sheer force of numbers (as opposed to martial skill) so long as they remained armed.
The security of a free state could not be ensured any other way if there was to be an army at all.
I understand your point, and as far as assessing motivations, I think you're spot on.
Still, they are constrained by political and operational realities. Like any other threat, they're not free to operate without consequences. As we used to say, "The enemy always gets a vote in your plan."
In a different world, where Obama and company were free to act without possibility of repercussion or failure, that would be one thing. This is not the case. In particular, the left has a major advantage and a major disadvantage. Their advantage is their reliable special interest voting blocks form a massive constituency that will politically back anything, and I fear that to be *anything*, that is done to keep their checks flowing. The disadvantage is that these loyal elements on the left are not soldiers, and cannot be mobilized. At best, they can be incited to protest locally or to attack their own neighborhoods.
That means that the left needs (a) and army, and (b) a context to use the army. The context being the more important of the two, because we have plenty of armies lying around. The context is what will allow the left to marshal the rank and file of the center-right security apparatus of the U.S. (law enforcement, military, national intelligence) against the far right (patriots, TEA party, Constitutionalists) that are their enemies.
The left has to turn the center-right against the far-right because the left has no army and no way to get one. All they have are dependent masses that will not question them or leave their side. That's a mighty advantage in most cases, but when push comes to shove, throngs of street protestors mean somewhat less than organized troops. The left needs force to back it's intentions up, and that force does not come without complications.
That's exactly why this scenario was written as DHS (center-to-center right) versus the TEA Party/Klan/terrorists (ostensibly the extreme right). The scenario's narrative is crucial because let them split the country along lines favorable to the fight they want to have. It's laughably inept, though, unless anyone out there is aware of a nascent neo-Confederate insurgency rising from the TEA Party that I'm presently unaware of. Sadly, the left may believe this twisted fantasy. This is the stuff that epic miscalculations are made of.
So, despite what our friends on the left would do if they could wave a wand and have their way, down here on earth, they have to play the cards they were dealt. Don't lose sight of the fact that any card they play can and will be countered.
bmfl
In the context and vernacular of the Eighteenth Century, "well-regulated" meant "well-organized, well-trained and well-equipped".
I am assuming that. I would assess that the goal of the left is a social and political transformation of the United States from a Constitutional republic into a socially just collectivist state run by what they would view as benevolent elites for the betterment of all mankind.
When you get right down to it, transformation is the goal of most of our enemies. Militant Islam would far prefer to conquer the U.S. and convert us at sword point rather than destroy us outright. Same goes for the left.
Not to be disagreeable, but one of your statements is, IMHO, one of the great misconceptions of the modern era.
That if the grid collapsed or (as we are kinda seeing now with the droughts) there is a crop collapse or whatever that we just “go back to the good ole 1800’s”.
Gas lights in the streets, everybody has a garden in their backyard and chickens in the front, there’s lots of cotton growing and wood stoves and all that.
Not gonna happen. We don’t have even the skills to reproduce the 1800’s.
Make soap? Oh, yeah, I’m sure twenty five people might post here telling you how they have personally made tons of soap.
They are lying or testosterone loaded or both.
Even build a buggy much less a harness, be able to shoe a horse, being a smith or a cobbler or able to do even primitive medical procedures?
One in a million. That’s probably an overestimate.
It would take DECADES or maybe even a CENTURY before we got back to the 1800’s.
Sure, there are many people around with a wide variety of skills, and who have done some pretty interesting things. I do home brewing of beer.
But as a whole, we don’t have the cultural values, the type of industry, or the skills and values to support 300 million people like it was an old small town in North Carolina or something.
Correct. It isn't what it is, it is what the media's masters of imagery make it look like, and how much they can rely on the ignorance and sheer propensity of the average TV watcher for being suckered.
OK, carry on.
Yes.
Going back to an 1800's technology also means going back to an 1800's population.
Dang!
I know and have known many good field-grade officers. The Navy has had officers like Marcenko (Commander/05) who were good, and NOT political. It seems that to make 06 and above is where the shift occurs. Look at how many 06s and above it took to rail-road LtCol Lakin into prison for his constitutional stand.
Let’s say that I am National Guard, ordered into a town to make arrests or put down “insurrection”. I don’t want to shoot civilians, and I feel very uncomfortable in my role, but I go. I don’t intend to shoot anyone. Then someone fires on me or shoots the man next to me who is my friend. Where do I go now? Where is my loyalty? Adrenaline. survival instinct, tribal affiliation, lot’s of forces at work here. Now my hind brain and instincts overdrive my cerebral cortex and intellect. This is how we can get played against each other.
Listen to an FBI sniper justify and defend his colleague for shooting an unarmed woman holding an infant.
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I believe I heard on FNC this morning that a live bomb has been found in a federal building in Detroit
It was a package that was allegedly checked out - one lamebrained jerk actually picked it up and shook it -
It was placed under a counter inside the building and then ignored - but for some reason it never detonated -
Allegedly a man has been arrested now
Blame has been placed on a private security firm and some federal employees
This is the type of security that Obamaville has given to America
I imagine this was not covered by most of the media - “Spike it now!” was likely heard a media budget meetings -
The only surprise I had was that Sarah Palin and the Tea Party were not blamed by ABC - so far -
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You note that Pelosi, Obama, and all those pro-OWS creeps have suddenly gotten very quiet about violent criminal OWS radicals - since OWS broke into an Obama campaign office on the left coast -
Rabid dogs make lousy pets -
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