Posted on 02/26/2010 9:40:34 AM PST by misharu
Something we all knew . . .
400,000 machine guns in civilian hands. Good start.
Mountains, too. The land itself is not terribly desirable. Most of the value is created by the character of the people living there.
Love the stickers in his gun cabinet(filing cabinet).
Dug into those mountains as well.
Yep.
Switzerland is a good model for an armed citizenry/militia, but HEAVY WEAPONS make the difference.
If a division of armor could operate in Switzerland, game over.
An armed society is a polite society.
Might be a little more to it than that. The country of Georgia is pretty moutainous. So is Afghanistan. Both seem to get invaded pretty much like clockwork.
Switzerland was valuable real estate when people were invading Italy from the north. Nobody has really done that in a while (except Austria-Hungary during WW1 and they didn't need Swiss territory to do it).
In an ideal world, I would have two long guns in my cabinet: An MP 7, for combating hoodlums in armor, and a Kryss Super V for everything else.
Afghanistan gets invaded because the inhabitants keep coming out and making trouble. If they just sat there, nobody would bother the place.
Also helps that they have SIG rifles that most fo us would die for or go broke buying one. Also on the range “he ain’t playin” spray or pray. Serious stuff.
The Soviets saw just how good Finnish farmers could shoot when they invaded Finland in 1939. Finnish Valmet rifles also helped. One of the most brutal wars no one ever heard of. Russians were slaughtered by the thousands and Finland lost about 20% of their population.
Well, “Afghanistan” is really several rival nations cobled together and nobody really much likes anybody else, so you’ll get no argument there.
My point is that Switzerland stopped being a crossroads when France stopped trying to dominate the northern Italian mini-states after Napoleon. Since then Switzerland is kinda off the beaten path in a way that Afghanistan & Georgia are not.
Since my family is Swiss-Italian, emigrating to California from Maggio in the 1800s, I agree with this whole-heartedly!
The Afghanis are tribes and their whole life and culture revolves around fighting and killing.
Rifles are often severly underestimated as a mainstay of national defense, scoffed at as little better than personal defense. But the dirty truth is, that tanks have to refuel and rearm. They need infantry along to not be at the mercy of infantry.
Think of our armored forces,, and think of the extreme difficulty we had for several years in iraq against AK’s and RPGs. Then imagine those guys were shooting like Swiss riflemen.
If Switzerland was as flat as Ukraine, the Nazis would have still stayed away.
I disagree.
The problems in Iraq are because we aren’t there to CONQUER.
If you truly want to CONQUER, heavy weapons win every time.
“In Switzerland, they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.”
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