• @stoly@lemmy.world
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    -612 days ago

    I have never understood how some think that people with guns can withstand the largest armed forces on the planet.

      • @JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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        011 days ago

        ISIS and Hamas haven’t actually accomplished anything. Not exactly worth emulating.

        If we want to emulate the Taliban, we’d have to go hide out in Mexico until the Trump administration gives up and gifts us our country back. Somehow I don’t think that would work out for us quite so well.

          • @BigPotato@lemmy.world
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            112 days ago

            The Taliban has Guns and Mountains though, so only the Rockies and the Appalachians stand a chance. The Midwest would get rolled so hard.

            • @HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              512 days ago

              The Taliban did operate in a lot of open desert areas as well and had marginal success, I would assume that American people would be better armed than the Taliban and you’d probably see US military or National guard guys stealing and supplying the militia groups if it got serious. Look at Ukraine as well a lot of flat farmlands and Russia even with all of their equipment has a hard time pushing forward, and they just zerg.

            • @ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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              512 days ago

              The Taliban has Guns and Mountains though

              They also never relied on social media provided by US-based corporations (and with built-in back doors) for their organization and communications.

    • @AndiHutch@lemmy.zip
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      2912 days ago

      Time to check out a history book or two. With that attitude, US would still be a colony of Britain. Or the US would’ve won in Vietnam instead of getting kicked out by the locals. Granted, it is a bit different without an ocean in between, but it could still happen. Or we could break up like what happened to the USSR.

      • @stoly@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        We’d be better off if we were still a colony. Independence was rally just a larger version of January 6 with equally suspicious symbols.

        The real question is how many people you are willing to sacrifice for this. How many cities are you willing to burn down?

        • @AndiHutch@lemmy.zip
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          812 days ago

          Maybe so there is really no way to tell.

          The real question is how many people you are willing to sacrifice for this. How many cities are you willing to burn down?

          Nah that’s not the right question. Talking like that makes you sound like a federal agent trying to entrap people. A better question might be who and what stands in the way of helping the people and how can we address those problems? But that is far less attention grabbing and harder to answer.

    • EldritchFemininity
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      1912 days ago

      The purpose of an armed resistance isn’t a direct confrontation with an armed force. It’s the death of a thousand logistical cuts. It’s bleeding the country’s economy dry by disrupting the commerce required to keep daily life running smoothly and crippling the regime’s forces by making people afraid to sign up - one way or another. Whether that’s neighborhoods chasing ICE out or people finding out where cops and soldiers live and “paying them a visit” in the dead of night. An armed resistance’s goal is to simply be too big of a thorn to ignore but too entrenched and evasive to be worth the amount of money and effort it would take to catch them. Even just their existence in the media is a form of warfare. By simply being in the news they show a population that the regime can be resisted, even by just a bunch of people with guns.

      Look at Napoleon’s war in Russia in 1812 and his massive losses due to poor supply lines, disease, and the Russians scorched earth policy ahead of the fierce Russian winter. Or to the American Revolution, where a bunch of farmers with guns and the financial backing of France became such a thorn in the side of the British Empire that they became one of the most powerful and obnoxious countries of the past two centuries and are the subject that started this whole conversation.

      You can turn your guns on the entire country’s population, but then what? You’re going to have a hard time keeping troops loyal when it’s their friends and family on the other side of the gun, and terrorizing the population like that will make it impossible to keep the propaganda machine going. You’d be forced to rule through direct oppression, which would breed more resentment and more people willing to pick up a gun and fight back. Your only hope is to convince the discontent population that opposition is pointless and the true believers that you are right.

          • @stoly@lemmy.world
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            -1312 days ago

            What you are suggesting is really shared terrorism where both sides keep committing war crimes. Oh, actually, that sounds like any war the US has been involved with so I guess that works.

            • @Formfiller@lemmy.world
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              12 days ago

              The fact is it is possible to fight back against a stronger foe and win if it comes to that. Again I am responding to your original comment. I think most sane people stuck in the US right now are aware that we’re living in a tinderbox. To be clear I didn’t suggest anything I just simply stated through anecdotal evidence that it is possible to stand up to a larger force and win. Like everyone else I don’t want harm to come to the people I love but that’s not always something we can choose.

    • @Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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      312 days ago

      The largest armed forces had hospitals been very bad with dealing with insurgency. It can crush a national military in days. An armed populace is just a quagmire it has little ability to deal with

      • @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 days ago

        It wasn’t just guns though. In Vietnam, it was traps, tunnels, jungle terrain, etc. And in Iraq/Afghanistan, they used IEDs and suicide bombers…

        Insurgency is possible, but it’s very costly. And you’d need more than just firearms.