pimpdave wrote:Jenos Ridan wrote:
Well, certainly not head on. Ever hear of Guerrilla Warfare? Che Guevara wrote a short manual on the topic.
Yeah, I've even read it.
But then, I have to wonder what the people at Wounded Knee thought? Especially since they had already fucking surrendered. Or Ruby Ridge, or at the Branch Davidian Compound.
There has not been successful guerrilla warfare waged in the USA since the war fought to earn our independence (and in a few before then), so good luck with that.
That is because, when you look at the examples you set forth, we see none of them had a clue what they were doing.
Wounded Knee: the Indians surrendered, but someone mistook an action as hostile and opened fire.
Ruby Ridge: the moron thought he could fend them off and so he hunkered down when he should have ran into the wilderness and stayed mobile.
Branch Davidians: David Kerech(sp?) didn't know diddly about war plus he was a nutjob. Probably figured that if he set it all ablaze he'd ignite some sort of holy war against the federal government. Again, he should have fled to someplace like the Rockies or a similar area, where the terrain is difficult for large bodies of men and vehicals and there conduct hit-and-run attacks and ambushes, never establishing a fixed base and staying mobile.
But in the case of the revolution, it was not all guerilla warfare. The Continental Army often, to limited sucess at first, engaged the British head on, especially from Trenton onwards to Yorktown. General Washington wanted officers experienced in the European method of war, mostly because none of his troops had any battle experience or training. Enter Baron von Steuben, who gave the early US Army it's first drill manual and with it the phrase "doing it by the numbers".
The best examples of true guerilla warfare are in Latin America, were Che got all of his experience in the matter.
Vietnam is not a good example because the VC were supplied, materially and not just financially, by the Soviets and Red China.
Neither is Afghanistan, for when the Soviets were fighting it, they could very well have won had we not gave the Afghans the Stinger missile that downed so many MIL Mi-24s.
Again, neither are the current conflicts in Iraq and in Israel. Hamas likes to tell the world "we violate the Koranic injunction against suicide because we have no other options", which is both a lie and quite simply stupid.
The same could almost be said about Vietnam, save that it was a matter of MacNamara's "Brillient" decisions and those of his "Wizkids", some of whom thought that since the M-16 didn't come with a crome-plated barrel it didn't need one. Same bunch of drooling morons who allowed the rifles to be issued without cleaning kits as a COST SAVING MEASURE! Anybody who owns a gun should have clue one that not been able to regularly clean a gun is a bad thing, especially when you take into account the damp jungle environment, the type of powder used in the cartridge and the rate of fire (damp environment + ball powder - regular cleaning = tragic failure) of the weapon in question.
Bringing this rant to a close, guerilla campaigns, if properly executed from start to finish, can be effective. However, to address a specific point in more detail:
Frigidus wrote:Guerrilla Warfare doesn't work when fighting your own government. If a country ever gets bad enough that such steps would be required, the completely corrupted government would simply exterminate the populations of any guerrilla hot spots.
1) All Guerilla wars are conducted inside of a nation against the national regime, much like how a civil war is conducted against one part from another.
2) Which seals the oppressive regime's fate, as they just lost the support of wide tracts of the population that was borderline if even nominally supportive. In truth, any region is a hotspot, 'though some more than others.
The best way to deal with guerillas is to make them fight you on your terms. In the case of conventional, regular forces (as opposide to the irregular forces which guerillas fail into the catagory of), this means forcing them to go toe-to-toe with you, where your forces will have all the advantages of firepower, local superiority of numbers, mobilty, etc.
I hope my ranting has either been entertaining or enlightening.
) and even larger numbers of regulars standing down or "concientiously objecting". Basically, the powers-that-be couldn't count on americans to kill americans so in with the UN forces and maybe even the Chinese the way the loyalties lie nowadays.
