Question about guns

[Dachs]

What doesn't seem to be getting through to a lot of people here is that mounting an insurgency against an occupying modern conventional force is a vicious, destructive business. Firstly, you have to mount what is in effect a civil war against your own people, because there will be collaborators. You have to destroy infrastructure, because the more modern army can take advantage of it better than you can. You have to disrupt the economic life of your country in any way possible in order to try and force the rest of the populace to connect straitened economic times with the occupiers and win the war for hearts and minds.

Basically, you turn your own country into a ruin. Remember what Afghanistan looked like in 1993? Or Vietnam in 1979? Or Spain in 1815? Even if you do force the conventional forces to withdraw - something that is by no means guaranteed - you're saddled with a wasteland. It's basically committing suicide out of the fear of death.

Is that even remotely desirable to anybody who thinks this sort of thing through?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You should have been more specific then. Not that invading North Vietnam would have solved much in that specific conflict, quite the opposite really. But yes, generally actual occupation goes a long way.

It went without saying, I thought. Vietnam was fought very differently than most wars in history before it. Different from all of them, probably.

Which we really didn't do in WWII either. Aside from Dresden or Tokyo, the allied bombing campaigns were mostly aimed at war capacity facilities and such rather than civilians. The civilian toll was much larger because bombing was terribly inaccurate and industrial and military targets were often in very close proximity to civilian areas. Even the atomic bombs were dropped on militarized cities in lieu of bigger civilian targets. So pretty much the bombing strategy in Vietnam was not very different than the ones in WWII.

The bombs we dropped on 'factories' didn't distinguish between civilian and military forces. Much less so than even the primitive guided munitions and aiming techniques we had in Vietnam. Just because we only firebombed a few cities doesn't mean we didn't try and level the rest of them.

Those too had other factors. Disease and manpower. Millions of white Americans and Europeans versus the ever diminishing survivors of the near apocalyptic Columbian smallpox epidemic. And either way there wasn't really that big of a technology or firepower gap in the American Indian Wars considering the soldiers, settlers and natives were carrying the same kind of weapons. Artillery was fairly rare and too heavy to be useful in most fights with highly mobile American Indians.

There were huge differences in technology between what our government sent against the Native Americans and what they fielded against us.

Yeah. It's a chicken/egg thing. No reason to go in circles.

I'm not going in circles. You ignored the obvious and refuse to back down from a blanket statement.

 

[Flying Pig]

In their defence, the threat of force has significant value, in that its presence may render the use of force unneccessary. Totally agree with the post, mind.

EDIT: Cross-post

 

[El_Machinae]

At least you're consistent.

Keep in mind, I don't support the 2nd Amendment. I'm not an American, and I think having a 'constitutional right' to access to weapons is unnecessary. I think any preamble about it being an inalienable, god-given right is silly. But, I'm not an American, I was raised in a different culture.