Math 101: US Standing army 800,000 ( minus defections ). The potential army of insurrection = 30,000,000 ( actually who knows how many more).
“...US Standing army 800,000 ( minus defections ). The potential army of insurrection = 30,000,000 ( actually who knows how many more).” [central_va, post 52]
Arithmetic is everything. And nothing.
Americans are highly averse to losses in action. Especially in ground combat: they grow war-weary in a hurry.
Consider the October 1993 incident in Mogadishu - the subject of Mark Bowden’s book and the subsequent film directed by Ridley Scott. US forces racked up a kill ratio between 80 and 100 to one. But the entire affair has gone down in pop-culture memory as an American defeat.
During Desert Storm in early 1991, public opinion swung against Coalition actions, because of the large numbers of casualties inflicted by Coalition air attacks against Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait. In other words, we were killing the enemy too well.
In the 1970s, the nation walked away from Southeast Asia because unhappiness over losses created a reversal in public opinion.
During the Second World War, US Joint Chiefs of Staff and theater commanders developed serious concern that US opinion would reverse itself on the war effort against Imperial Japan, because US & Allied Forces were experiencing combat losses that mounted steadily with each succeeding ground action - despite the fact that combat operations kept racking up a kill ratio of ten to one or greater. It’s all there in the meeting minutes.
In the face of these sorts of verified or anticipated public reactions to historical numbers (not the estimates that central_va admits are highly speculative anyway), optimism appears less warranted.