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To: Little Ray

Been there. Conservative or not, troops tend to obey their orders. If ordered to suppress an insurrection or rebellion, they WILL supress it to best of their ability. The first Civil War was bad enough. A civil war with modern weaponry does NOT bear thinking about.

________________

Remember the Bonus Army that marched on Washington during the Depression was fired on by troops led by General MacArthur.


114 posted on 09/22/2004 7:22:02 AM PDT by snakeoil (A+Bert)
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To: snakeoil

That Bonus "Army" was unarmed. And the firing was with tear gas and truncheons, not bullets. It didn't involve lethal force. It is very difficult to get REGULAR (as opposed to special internal security) troops to fire on their own citizens (and don't bother mentioning Kent State; those shooters were scared, poorly trained weekenders). Here is a classic example.

In 1962, the people of Novocherkassk, Russia rioted over a rise in the price of bread. Things got so out of hand that communist party headquarters were trashed. The police were ineffectual, so regular army troops were brought in. The regular troops SIDED WITH THE CITIZENRY. After all, it was from the lowly citizenry that these troops came. Special Interior Ministry (not Defense Ministry) troops (who were ethnic Kazakhs and hated Russians anyway) had to be brought in to put down the uprising. So you see, regular troops from the best large army in the world at that time would not fire on their own people. Totalitarian states are able to maintain order because they use special security forces (ZOMO in communist Poland, MVD interior troops in the old USSR, Securitate in Communist Romania, Special Republican Guards in Saddam's Iraq) because regular troops recruited from the local people can't be relied upon to quell a popular rebellion over the long haul.


121 posted on 09/22/2004 7:30:58 AM PDT by Stop_Neocons (Only a fool sticks his hand in a hornet's nest)
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