...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.)
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
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The state will have informants in any revolutionary group
The taliban had expert bomb makers before the war even started, and many were experienced from fighting the soviets
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
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"?
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.
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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
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
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
Meaningless, they have production capability around the globe and allies who will supply them
You seriously believe that the military won't care that a load of heavy weaponry got stolen?
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
Assuming they don't get embargoed
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Was Iraq as fond of spying on its own citizens as the USA though?
Fair point
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?
To hit all of them you will need a hell of a lot of people scattered all across the US
Surely they would react differently to a breakin than to someone skimming guns off the top
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?
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why am I not surprised by that
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?
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?
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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
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?
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Those guard armouries you mentioned earlier wouldn't happen to have things like javelins and at4s would they?
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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!