...The NLF (Viet Cong) and the Taliban would like a word with you. You don’t go toe to toe with the US military, you bleed them dry in a people’s protracted war if necessary. In such a situation time is on the side of the guerillas, as their very existence is a continuous threat to the government’s legitimatcy and a humiliation. Each flight of a jet plane or drone, every laser guided missile, every day a ground force has to remain mobilized costs millions of not billions of dollars.
For example, the Taliban would pay some villager $3 to go on top of hill by a military base, unload a mag from a AK47 in the general direction of the base and then immediately leave. The base would then be placed on high alert, search and response teams would have to be mobilized, maybe they’d fly up a helicopter to look around. Of course they’d always find nothing, as the villager had already went home and had dinner while the American soldiers were trampling through the mountains looking for a Taliban strike team that didn’t exist. The Americans would then return back to base tired and demoralized.
Once the base had been declared safe again and all the soldiers had settled in to rest, another villager would come and shoot off another mag at them, forcing them to go through the whole process over again because if it was a strike team they’d be fucked if they ignored it. And they’d do this everyday, week after week, month after month, year after year. Cost for the Taliban? $20 and some 50 year old Soviet military surplus. Cost for the Americans? Hundreds of gallons of fuel, the soldier’s morale, disruption to the base’s function, national pride. Hell if the locals were feeling ambitious maybe they’d leave a few IEDs around a blow up a truck or a guys right leg. That’s another news story back in the states, another asset lost to the quagmire with nothing to show for it. And if some fustrated “operator” decides to take it out on a local Afghan?? Well he’s just made all their male relatives and friends Taliban sympathizers if not fighters. That’s asymmetric warfare in a nutshell right there, done by the best in the business.
Now look at the state of Afghanistan. The Taliban control like 75% of the country, the president has been basically reduced to being the mayor of Kabul, despite the US dumping trillions of dollars and thousands of troops into this conflict. Just in February the American Empire was forced to the negotiation table with the Taliban and is straight up about to run away with it’s tail between its legs.
NOTE: I don't endorse the Taliban or anything like that, they're fundamentalist fascists, but they've kicked the asses of two superpowers and you just gotta hand it to them, they're effective.
(This was initially a response to a comment but I got into the writing move and cranked this out so I think it's worthy of its own post.)
Being a pawn of imperialism doesn't mean you aren't an imperialist however. By 1917 the Russian military was collapsing on itself and as many conscripts were deserting as were being sent to the front. The Petrograd garrisons that did rebel did so because they did not want to go to the front and most of the fighting was carried out by workers in the Red Guards. If these conditions arise then absolutely we should be reaching out to the soldiers. However, looking at the comfort and satisfaction of regular military units in the imperial core today suggests there is little revolutionary potential among them as they are well fed, paid, and relatively safe. Anecdotally a lot of them are also rabid fascists who got worse when they joined the military but maybe that is just the ones I know.
Not comparable.
You are on the empire's home ground, you are already known to them (unless you are undocumented), you don't have the expertise of those groups, their supply lines are far shorter, they can bring everything they have to bear against you, the majority of the population at large WILL be hostile to you, you don't have a bunch of old soviet military hardware lying around.This kind of arrogance and ignorance of basic realities will get people killed and a revolution stopped dead in it's tracks
meaning that they’re completely unprepared to deal with any local ‘action’
The state will have informants in any revolutionary group
in the imperial heartland i’d wager that your average dipshit is more likely to have had some kind of military service but even if not those afghans didn’t wake up one day as unstoppable killing machines
The taliban had expert bomb makers before the war even started, and many were experienced from fighting the soviets
and almost completely undefended as are the factories, airports rail yards and ports.
The air bases where they will land the supplies in the event that you are even moderately successful are protected with machine gun nests and APCs. You won't be able to hold the factories and the idea that you can deplete their stockpiles of equipment, ammunition, and aviation fuel, to the point that the factories will even become relevant is ludicrous
you can have one but not the other. that support will last right up to the moment where the air force vaporizes the wrong school bus and then it’s gone forever.
Are we talking about the same USA? The police vapourised an entire block to murder a group of black people and noone outside of lefty circles seems to care, plus the current gestapo knockoff going around dragging people off the street while the majority ignore it. Do you think the public won't rationalise the collateral damage to protect their country from "dangerous terrorists"?
a guard armory is probably in your town, full of infantry small arms and defended by a lock and an alarm
That alarm will bring down heavily armed soldiers and possibly armoured vehicles into the area and they won't leave until the hardware is found. Better hope noone rats you out. And small arms aren't the problem, you have no anti-air, you have nothing to deal with armoured vehicles. The Taliban had anti-tank weapons and some anti-air weapons left by the soviets.
like they had informants in the Taliban and every fighting group in Iraq and yet…
The main difference being if one of the informants over there say "The members of the group are..." the US doesn't have access to every single detail of the fighters' identity, for their own citizens they have access to every record of your life since birth
like I said the wars have been going on for long enough that this is a moot point, plenty here have lots of experience too
They have experience of fighting as a conventional army with proper equipment, the Taliban had experience fighting guerilla war with whatever they could find, there is a big difference
they’re protected by a chain-link fence and civilian cops at most, even the MPs are only carrying M9s and maybe a few M4s at the stock house and that’s it.
Considering that the USAF airbase near where I live (UK) has two bradleys on the tarmac, and machinegun nests around the tower with the airfield security carrying M16s, i find that hard to believe
but you can destroy them
Meaningless, they have production capability around the globe and allies who will supply them
lmao no it won’t, the cops might show up thirty minutes later and that’s that.
You seriously believe that the military won't care that a load of heavy weaponry got stolen?
molotovs if you find any armored vehicles stupid enough to come into a built-up area after you
Molotovs don't work on modern armour, the abrams is pretty much watertight, plus getting close enough to throw one and then get away without being mown down would be difficult
those were given by other countries in a trickle compared to the firehose Norinco would point at California
Assuming they don't get embargoed
at least in Iraq they did, yes.
Was Iraq as fond of spying on its own citizens as the USA though?
from experience, something being used on you is maybe the best teacher.
Fair point
I live miles away from one of the largest and most important air force bases in the US. I’ve been inside of it multiple times and flown out of it once, I assure you, they don’t have bradleys and the MPs aren’t carrying M-16s. Bases off CONUS are different, naturally.
Fair enough, but if any revolution gets off the ground, surely they'll step up security at least to the level of bases in friendly countries.
Just out of curiosity, it isn't Whiteman is it?and we’re back to the total lack of defense of ports and airports and rail yards etc
To hit all of them you will need a hell of a lot of people scattered all across the US
Do you have any idea how many weapons go missing every year? How many straight-up get sold off by armory staff or just fall off the back of a truck?
Surely they would react differently to a breakin than to someone skimming guns off the top
I assure you from experience that they totally work on modern armor
I'm confused as to how, the way a molotov knocks out a tank is by killing/incapacitating the crew, cooking off the ammunition, or igniting the fuel. How does that happen when the tank is watertight?
It was actually us doing the spying for Iraq
why am I not surprised by that
in the event of a civil war or revolution the military would fracture and it wouldn’t really matter.
Once the revolution has built momentum (assuming it isn't dead before that point) I can see that maybe happening, but if you're grabbing those guns early on, when it's a minor insurrection, would they react as if it were wartime?
If you toss one on the engine deck the burning whatever will work its way into air intakes and set filters on fire and melt wires, belts and hoses; then the tank’s a mobility kill. It would be out of the fight at least until recovered or it would be abandoned in place and destroyed.
I was lead to believe that would be a difficult shot at the best of times, even more so if you are in danger of being lit up by the coaxial machine gun, or is that wrong?
In the UK I can’t imagine that there is a single patch of land that isn’t at most an hour away by helicopter from the nearest large military post.
This is mostly true, there are places that would take longer to get to because of how the bases are distributed. But one thing working in our favour is that our army in particular has been cut back to the bone, there are only ~73,470 (as of last november) active personnel, the lowest it's been since the 2nd world war
ideally you’ll be trying to kill it from above it in town or a city.
I was under the impression that tanks operated with infantry support, they sweep buildings then the tanks advance, then rinse and repeat, or is that just us and the French?
Those guard armouries you mentioned earlier wouldn't happen to have things like javelins and at4s would they?
Making bombs seems pretty easy. You need a little bit of electrical knowledge (i.e. don’t be Terry Robbins) and some materials. There’s lots of information online, and tannerite and consumer drones can both be bought at Walmart.
True, even as a teenager here in the UK i DEFINITELY DID NOT play around with making ABSOLUTELY NOT thermite and COMPLETELY FAKE gunpowder, but there is no substitute for years of experience
I'm not telling people to go pick up their AR and head down to their local national guard depot tomorrow. This is basically the worst case scenario anyway for a revolution, a protracted insurgency is fucking brutal for both sides and would only emerge in dire conditions. Still, it's definitely possible for the guerillas to win, that's what I'm getting at.
But this sort of military struggle needs to also be matched by a political struggle. Winning over the population is the key to victory always in asymmetric warfare. The other stuff comes along with that.
You will need foreign support, the only way I see any revolution succeeding is if a foreign country is already invading, or the US has split up into multiple countries
I think you could potentially gain some ground if the tactics leaned more heavily on economic warfare and propaganda, opposed to just direct confrontation. In other words, economic sabotage, organizing and propagandizing MIC workers and soldiers, prioritizing targeting business/civilian leadership, and activities designed to create a wedge between the government and the general public.
Fighting on their home turf presents unique challenges, but also some unique advantages. The biggest advantage, imo, is that we’d potentially have much more influence over the economic levers and social structures that they would absolutely need in order to win a war. Not saying lessons can’t be learned from other conflicts, but I think this would be quite different in most respects.
What if you have revolutionary sympathizers in Canada, Mexico, China... all of South and Central America able to form an underground network? And able to finance via control of drug cartels...?
Don’t be too pessimistic!
The Vietnamese spent two generations fighting a protracted guerilla war against the French colonists, and then the Japanese Imperialists, and then the French again, and then the Americans, with a healthy amount of civil war thrown in.
Millions perished to win independence over decades. They did it with expert military leadership, Machiavellian political manuevering, and a dogged determination fit for legends.
Americans haven't even begun to fight. We show up in major municipalities and get tear gassed and bean bagged until the Feds go home. Our leadership sucks. Our politics sucks. And our commitment can barely survive a news cycle.
We're not the Vietnamese. We're not the Taliban. We're Americans. We suck.
We’re not the Vietnamese. We’re not the Taliban. We’re Americans. We suck.
Thank you for saying this. No one here has the intestinal fortitude for guerilla warfare. It's as cringy as those gamers who think they can wage combat because of COD.
okay but to be honest, it wouldnt be too hard for me to walk out someday in a videogame and just empty a mag at a building
i do more than that getting my mail every week.
id especially do it for like $40.
this type of fighting really doesnt require much thinking, just throw your gun in a ditch once your finished and walk home and you're all good. not much risk, especially if you're emotionally invested in a revolution
dont wanna sound r/iamverybadass but it really wouldnt be that hard, even with how lazy you libs can be smh
you can even fuckin' do it if you're a pacifist, you can buy 22. blanks for like $15 for a pack of 50
serve me motherfucker and ill stop talking about dumb shit
aight
back to my regularly schedules hornyposting then
We show up to major municipalities, and when we get too uppity, half the country goes: "look at those savages, look how violence!" The rest makes some posts on facebook and twitter and goes back to sleep. It's a big thing for about a month and a half before inevitably fizzling out. We have a disorganized group of angry people, a small minority of which have explicit leftist tendencies. Most people are liberals and boy does it show. Whatever leadership we do have are SocDems at best. We are decades away from anything even remotely resembling 1905.
We are totally, and I cannot emphasize this enough, fucked.
I think we are in a situation of transition where enough of Americans are still benifit from bourgoise oppresion, that they aren't going to support its overthrow. Someone had a map the other day and it showed that the top 40% of American's still own a lot in the the U.S. I don't think we are going to see major change in the west until the petit bourgois see their share of the pie decrease dramatically.
And that is just within the U.S., Even the opprsed classes in the U.S. are realteively well off compared to the oppressed people in the rest of the world, so that is going to fuel fascism.
I think what we are going to see in the next decade or so, though, is a fairly rapid decline in the U.S. empire (or nuclear war...) which is going to force the bourgoise to extract more value from the petit bourgois, which will in turn heighting class antagomism and radicalize them.
I think the only counter to this would be a more extreme form of facism where the leftist elements in society are murdered and terrorized sufficently enough that they are no longer a threat, and then the U.S. could just transition into some form of military dictatorship that can pour the vast majority of its wealth into maintaining its imperial holdings.
Of course, if that happens, the third world will be far more radicalized to fight against the U.S. and will probably fuck it up reallllly hard.
You are absolutely right. This sort of protracted insurgency is basically the late stage, worse case scenario for a revolution. Honestly this sort of conflict would probably destroy the country or take place in an already balkanized USA. We are at like the "scattered protests/rare riot" stage, which is really fucking far from anything like I was describing. But still, it's farther along then where we were 5 years ago. But we just got to keep marching forward somehow, and I don't want people to think it is futile and there's no hope because the imperial machine is invincible, because it's not. Big empires like ours have fallen before.
I would never suggest that America is hopeless (although history suggests we're a nation of painfully slow learners).
I just get tired of the "Revolution can work, just look at <revolting indigenous population>". History's footnotes are littered with failed revolutions. Nobody writes ballads about the Whiskey Rebellion or makes movie epics about Blair Mountain. And we never seem to recognize that these things play out over decades - centuries even. The folks fighting in the Boxer Rebellion were old men by the time China was colonialist-free.
And after all that fighting Vietnam is still crippled. America achieved what it wanted to - a show of force against true democracy. No one else in region even bothered putting up a fight throughout the period, and if they did they received the same treatment.
In addition to what others have said, there's a big difference between an imperial war and a civil war as far as the leadership is concerned. Losing Vietnam was humiliating to the American ruling class, sure, but it didn't materially affect them all that much. The stakes were, for them, low. They would have a very vested interest in beating down a local communist insurgency.
The army kinda has to, because if it's the one time it's not just some rando that base commander is going to be in for a world of hurt if he let some guerillas get close enough to launch a rocket at the motor pool or something.
This is something I heard quoted in relation to cybersecurity: if you’re running the server you have to be perfect all the time and have perfect implementation, but all the attacker needs to do is get lucky once
I've heard the same thing, but about Margaret Thatcher and her continued existence.
good post. I agree we should learn from their tactics. they're horrible humans, but they beat the empire over the past 20 years.
These aren't even exclusively Taliban tactics or anything, I just used them as an example because they are more relevant than Vietnam (that being like 50 years ago now). They've just been building on the methods developed by Mao Zedong in his own guerilla war. Asymmetric warfare has a really long history, basically as far back as states have been oppressing people.
The Afghans have been doing this since time immemorial.
Consider Kipling:
"A scrimmage in a Border Station --
A canter down some dark defile --
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!"
Kipling, Arithmetic on the Frontier
Mao, if he'd had similar terrain, would have been taking notes from the Afghans.
I think Syria offers far more lessons, because any uprising will wind up being fought in the cities, rural uprisings in the US are a white Maoist fantasy. To have a Maoist style guerilla war, you need the support of the people, and rural America isn't supporting a left revolution.
I know, I mean that they're the latest example of them in use and the closest in kind to our situation.
oh please don't get me wrong, being an insurgent is a brutal life. That's the reason people don't just jump into it, its terrible and there's a good chance you'll get merked by some bomb you never saw coming. This sort of thing only becomes an option if many people (like average people not cranks) see more hope for the future in rebellion than the status quo. As Americans, that is definitely NOT the case right now. Starting an armed rebellion right now would be literal suicide. But as the state infrastructure continues to decay and say we have climate disasters slamming the nation in the future, enough people may decide they'd rather try their luck with the rebels cause they think they'll die anyway if nothing changes.
(This was initially a response to a comment but I got into the writing move and cranked this out so I think it’s worthy of its own post.)
I'm glad you decided to post this or I wouldn't have seen it! This was absolutely worthy of its own post, thanks comrade <3
Lots of people in the chat talking about how you're going to have to be prepared to see your friends and family die, and that you have to be doing this for your whole life. Did you guys think that revolution is going to be easy? Do you think that the grandest and biggest imperialist that is the united states is going to let itself wither away via reforms and elections? Communism will not achieved without death and dying, a better world can only be achieved with revolutionary violence and anything less is delusional.
straight up about to run away with it’s tail between its legs.
It isn't going anywhere while it wants to use Afghanistan as a staging post for disruption of belt and road. It doesn't care about the country, but it does care about its geographical positioning to cause problems for China.
