Remember, the question we are considering is not whether a citizens guerrilla war against the American government would cause the government second thoughts about abridging the Bill of Rights and imposing tyranny. In my original post I concede the utility of the Second Amendment in that respect, that is, to deter the government.
What we are now considering is whether an insurrection, a guerrilla war, against the federal government by the people armed only with small arms can prevail and restore liberty against the government bent on imposing tyranny.
The tyranny we speak of will not be acknowledged by 100% of the people. We have a culture "war" being conducted right now in our midst and no one can say who has the upper hand. Are we going to have black against white? Black and brown against white? City against country? It is very unlikely to be a war of all the citizens against the regime but some of the citizens against other citizens and the regime.
Citizens on both sides will be armed and will be fighting each other. The regime could prevail by doing very little or nothing except perhaps turning off telephone, television, Internet, electricity, water, sewer, food deliveries, and shutting bridges, tunnels, highways, and hospitals. Under these circumstances how long do you think it will take for the mothers of babies to demand that their starving children be saved by surrendering? How long can their appeals be resisted by the insurrectionists? How can you reconcile the insurrectionists sacrificing their own children with the ideals of patriotism or basic humanity?
How will the insurrectionists communicate with one another? How will they detect infiltration by government agents? How will they prevent turncoats in their midst from betraying them and opening them to slaughter with modern weapons? How will they know that they have won, even if they can win? To the degree that information is vouchsafed to them it will be disseminated by the government which controls all the avenues of information and the propaganda flow will be all one way across the continent and the population of more than 300 million.
Citizens will not be fighting the same kind of war that was waged against the government in Afghanistan or Iraq because this government, bent as it is on tyranny, will probably be fanatical, it certainly will be ruthless, it will be entirely unencumbered by conscience or compassion. As you suggest, the rules of engagement from Iraq and Afghanistan will not apply. Rather the government will be able to behave as ruthlessly as they wish because there will be nobody to report their crimes because the means of public communication will be entirely in their control. Consider how Barack Obama would fight such a war and I think you might find that his ruthlessness against his own people would resemble Ho Chi Minh and Chairman Mao far more than it might resemble Abraham Lincoln.
The United States government in this scenario will not have lapsed into tyranny out of boredom but it will be energized by an ideology resembling militant Islam or communism. In other words, a government imposing tyranny on its people in America will have an ideological justification for doing so. It will not just have adherents, it will have fanatics. It will be able to pull along with it a substantial portion of the American population and the American armed force because it will be selling an idea attractive to a certain kind of person, who right now seem to make up something approaching 40% of our fellow citizens.
Armchair generals talk about strategy and tactics, professional military men talk about logistics. Logistics alone will decide the issue in favor of the government for the government will have virtually all of it under its control.
Furthermore, the question is one of a value judgment about the utility of waging such a war. Even presupposing that the citizens insurrection could prevail against all the might of the world's superpower, what will be won? Likely, tens of millions will starve or die of thirst when food is interdicted and water is cut off. You cannot assume that oil will be delivered, that the Internet will work, that electricity will still be available. Whole sections of the country will be cut off and starved into submission in a matter of a couple of weeks. Others will be frozen into submission. The government need not drop very many bombs at all to kill millions and demoralize survivors.
Before the government can be defeated it will have to be defeated by asymmetrical warfare. The world superpower is not going to be defeated by a gunfight at the O K corral. The only hope, remote as it is, is to defeat it by guerrilla tactics and, inevitably, by terrorism. Terrorism will generate reprisals.
If civil wars are the worst kind of strife for their unmitigated cruelty, Civil War marked by terrorism must be even worse. That is precisely why Robert E. Lee rejected a guerrilla campaign and instead surrendered at Appomattox. He was not alone in being aware of the history of Bleeding Kansas. Imagine the ghastly terror which must be visited upon so many innocent Americans in order for ill-equipped, ill armed, and isolated citizens to prevail. Lee was also aware of the ruthless suppression of the civilian population conducted by Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley and by Sherman in his march to the sea. Assuming that somehow terrorism can defeat armor, air, communications, intelligence, and all the rest of the weapons available to modern superpower, what will be left when the citizens claim victory?
Warlords!
To commit the country to a bloodbath believing without evidence that the American military will not turn against its own people is to risk the deaths of millions on a hunch. Why should our military turn against the government on behalf of terrorists? One of the most professional militaries in the world, the German military of 1939 with its code of honor, it's record in conducting effective war, it's brilliant general staff of The Prussian School, could not bring itself to attempt to assassinate Hitler until too late. It could not decline to obey his orders beginning with the occupation of the Rhineland, continuing through the invasion of Russia, culminating in the defense of Berlin with children. It not only acquiesced but collaborated in the deaths of millions of German Jews, homosexuals, priests and Gypsies. There were questions of the oath to Hitler and there were questions of patriotism mixed together. There were questions of professionalism and professional advancement. These mixed sentiments will cloud the moral picture in America as it did within the German officer corps and not the least so because they will be the stuff of relentless propaganda conducted by the government.
We have seen how Stalin killed so many of his Generals and Colonels prior to World War II and yet we saw what was left of them fight desperately to save the motherland and Stalin as well. We see Obama right now thinning out the ranks of his generals and admirals whom he likely sees as rivals to his authority. Who will be left to oppose a new Stalin? It is easy to declare that the American military will not fire on Americans but in this new age no one can presume to say how the military will behave. That which they might shrink from doing on the ground face-to-face against Americans, they might be quite willing to do from a bunker directing a drone and, not incidentally, advancing their career. Nobody can tell how effective party control over a made-over military might be, in the age of cybernetics who can doubt that the control exercised through cyber bits would be more thorough and more effective than the control exercised by commissars on the Eastern front.
Before the government makes a move against citizens it will have thoroughly mined all the intelligence resources available to it which apparently includes all of our e-mails, all of our telephone conversations, all of our posts on FreeRepublic. It will have thoroughly spied on the officer corps to determine who is untrustworthy and who can be relied upon. The officers will be even less immune to being stripped naked of their privacy than ordinary citizen insurrectionists.
We have no idea how the officer class will divide its loyalties. Will issues of race enter into their thinking? For example, would they believe as so many voters did twice in America, that to support the first Black President was a matter of the highest moral endeavor? Perhaps not all of them, but enough? In any event, believing as I do that we will have not just a war of insurrectionists against the government but insurrectionists against government supported by at least some citizens, we should not be surprised if we find many members of the armed forces on either side, just as we saw in 1861.
We have seen how the Obama administration masks every intrusion of our liberties and trespass on the Constitution with claims of moral purpose including wealth redistribution, curing the sick, humanitarian amnesty for refugee children, and saving the world from global warming. This should extremely disconcerting to every conservative and especially to every man who believes that the government will be unsupported when the people revolt and he should consider how many Americans accept these lies which mask Obama's outrages. Even at his lowest rating Obama gets approval of 40% of the people.
What percentage of the military would he get? The question is rhetorical, there is no simple answer. Those who presume to answer it are willing to risk their children, their grandchildren, and my children on nothing more than their own wishful thinking. A humbler man would instead seek to change the culture now while there is still time. He would advance the Article V movement while there is still time to change the culture, save the Republic and spare the children.
It is a pity that the NRA myopically undermines our best chance for securing our liberty through the Article V movement in the vain hope of protecting the Second Amendment and in doing so encourages many dreamers to indulge the delusion that citizens can militarily defeat the United States government.
The insurrection by the people, even patriots, will be short-lived, brutal, bloody and it will fail.
