Comment by youarentrightjr

Comment by youarentrightjr 5 days ago

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> The second amendment as a serious option for a regime reset button was always a fantasy. This federal government would happily take a lesson from the Chechen wars and use ballistic missiles against a rebelling city if the chips were down. Any 2A fans have their own Patriot missile defense systems? No?

If it's that easy, why did we spend 20 years in Afghanistan only to suffer defeat by goat herders holding AK-47s?

A quick review of the last 100 years will educate you on the viability of asymmetric warfare.

bigDinosaur 5 days ago

There are plenty of examples of asymmetric warfare where the stronger party crushed the weaker one. WW2 was full of such examples. People point to Afghanistan and Vietnam as if they apply in every situation, for some bizarre reason (I assume motivated reasoning).

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mullingitover 5 days ago

The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.” The military simply isn’t the right tool to lift a nation out of poverty and eventually the voters got bored.

In Vietnam, the US was fighting an army backed by the Soviet Union and China that had anti-aircraft and artillery.

No, the US insurgency would turn into a Grozny unless the insurgents get backing from China or some other serious player.

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  • kakacik 5 days ago

    Lol thats so untrue, are we already at the phase of rewriting this recent history?

    US and coalition held Kabul (mostly) and their bases, and that was about it. Rest of the country was lets say contested territory, never really conquered, never yielding to Kabul government or coalition.

    Ambushes, attacks, suicide bombers were daily grind. Not really conquered territory, is it.

    Whether it was or wasnt defeat - when you see soldiers desperately running away from the country in a very similar fashion that happened in Vietnam, I struggle to not describe it as a full military defeat. The fact that it was orchestrated by politicians doesn't change much.

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  • modo_mario 4 days ago

    >The NATO forces defeated the Taliban in a timeframe that could be measured in hours. The remaining years were an exercise in nation building, there was never “defeat.”

    There was never a "defeat" indeed but the taliban grew in numbers manifold over the course of the occupation so saying you defeated them in hours is also a funny take.

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    • mullingitover 4 days ago

      > over the course of the occupation

      This is my point: the war was over almost immediately, and since there was never any intention of permanently colonizing Afghanistan the occupation always had an expiration date.

      On the other hand, the United States already lives in the United States, there's no 'waiting it out.'

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  • pjc50 5 days ago

    Think of a rebellion as national "unbuilding" and you get some idea of how things might go.

    If things get that hot, there will be substantial defectors and various state and federal security services fighting each other.

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  • rbanffy 5 days ago

    I don’t think it’d be easy to get a Chinese ABM to Minneapolis without anyone noticing.

    What could happen in this scenario would be either local military defecting or guerrilla warfare while the US military targets them from afar. You can easily bomb anyone back to Stone Age in hours, but taking control of the ground can be a lot more challenging if the locals don’t cooperate.

    Anyway, a full-on civil war is a very unlikely - and undesirable - scenario.

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seanmcdirmid 5 days ago

The rebels (against the American regime) were all rural, ballistic missiles weren’t very effective when your enemy is wandering around the desert coming in out of rural Pakistan.

To get rid of the libs…they live in dense cities, trump would just have to lob a missile at Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, etc…it’s a war he can actually win quickly. Heck, why do you think it’s so easy for him to sh*t stir right now with a few strategic ICE surges. It’s easy when 90% of the left in Minnesota lives in one urban area.

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  • tastyfreeze 4 days ago

    If Trump bombed a US city there are enough people that would head to DC for his head he wouldn't last long. This is not Iran.

    I very much doubt, at this point in time, that anybody in the military would follow that order. The correct response to that order is to arrest the president. Their oath is to the Constitution not the president.

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  • ben_w 4 days ago

    Before such missiles even get launched, there's a serious risk of the US military saying "you are no longer the president".

    Even with a room full of sociopaths, a president ordering a missile sent to Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, etc. is the kind of thing that makes the stock markets very unhappy, what with those missiles hitting expensive business property and/or staff and/or customers.

    Even if the military and the local business leadership are all on board with the plan, foreign investments will crater, and the US needs that even just to handle the lack of balance in the budget.

    And that's all true even without the 2nd. I don't, and never have, bought into the story Americans tell about the 2nd keeping them safe from tyrants: it's neither powerful enough to do that, nor necessary to do that. But all those easy-to-access firearms and training to use them would make the second civil war extra brutal.

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