And the Taliban is made up of people who have a culture, all the way back to Alexander the Great, of never surrendering. They will fight, because that is who they are. Will that happen here? Most of the “TEA” party is older, conservative, and set in their ways. That is not the group you turn to in a war. They have to much to loose.
I respectfully disagree.
Contrary to popular belief, for every dope smoking hippie at Woodstock, there were a hundred "normal" American kids in the service in Vietnam, Germany, South Korea, etc. Not to mention the Ozzie and Harriet kids who went on to college, marriage, jobs, etc.
And yes, there are a ton of them, a veritable lump in the Python, so to speak.
I daresay the majority of those folks have not changed their political stripes: indeed, they are the nucleus and the rank and file of the Tea Party.
As far as "too much to lose", who has that, the 19 year old kid in today's Army who is looking forward to his first legal beer and piece of tail or the old buzzard who sees nothing ahead but the Balkanization of his once great Country and a death panel?
That is for certain.
.And the Taliban is made up of people who have a culture, all the way back to Alexander the Great, of never surrendering. They will fight, because that is who they are. Will that happen here? Most of the “TEA” party is older, conservative, and set in their ways. That is not the group you turn to in a war. They have to much to loose.
While that is true at the moment, we are discussing a scenario where it could be that they realize they have very little to lose. An order person that has lived the majority of his life as a free man, may not be so eager to spend his few remaining years as a serf. He may also be willing to sacrifice those years to prevent the serfdom of his children and grandchildren.
It's just intuition, but I suspect that there are more of those "older" people than you think that would be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country and their descendents. I hope we are not forced to find out.
Actually I think it is just the opposite of what you said. The older you get, the closer you are to dying anyway, and you finally realize there is really nothing to lose (you can't take it with you), and that there are some things worse than death.
The ROE in Afghanistan and Iraq were very tight. I don't ask this next question idly; this is a very serious element of this article's miscalculation.
Do you know why our ROEs were that tight?
Assuming that you know the reason for that, you'll understand that in the event of counterinsurgency operations within CONUS, the ROE would be tighter than ever before seen. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the closer the fighting gets to our vital interests, the less direct force the government will be able to bring to bear. The overlapping political and social concerns about using the uniformed U.S. security apparatus to unleash lethal force would intensify immensely if the fighting were local and not several thousand miles away.
(And yes, I'm aware of the historical background of military/LEO crackdowns in the U.S., but this is 2012, not 1912. Even Waco, the last large scale example, is still bitterly criticized today, and the Branch Dividians were isolated whackos with zero political pull or constituency outside of their compound walls. The TEA Party has sitting congressmen and tens of millions of supporters.)
The idea that the fundamental political mechanics behind tight ROEs would lessen once the contributing factors to tightening it increase astronomically is simply a non-starter. Many of our most potent capabilities would become as politically unusable as nuclear weapons. Using even comparatively gentle measures could create backlashes in public opinion that (1) would be unpopular among people on the fence, (2) ferociously energize the people opposed, and (3) weaken the resolve of supporters of the crackdown.
How many videos of helicopters (allegedly accidentally) gunning down unarmed civilians in the street would it take for public opinion to swing an additional 30% against the government? Losing control of the 'white hat/black hat' narrative is nothing less than the difference between victory and defeat. Remember, a few pictures of Abu Ghraib led to Fallujah. What would a Fallujah uprising look like in a nation of 350 million people, not 25 million?
This article was written in such a way as to ignore or minimize the social and political ramifications of stateside counterinsurgency in favor of looking at the doctrinal minutia of it, but avoiding the I/O topic isn't the same as having a plan for it.
At best, what the authors did by engineering the overt racism theme into the scenario was a bit of wishful thinking that won the I/O fight for them before it started. "These people are neo-Confederate Klansmen meanies, and nobody likes them." That's, at best, lazy writing and and lazier thinking that lets them deus ex machina their way to the fun doctrinal stuff at the end. At worst, it indicates that they don't have a blessed idea of what they're up against. Talking about an I/O plan that headlines Shows of Force (fighter jet flybys, etc) against the insurgents indicates an adequate understanding of counterinsurgency tactics, and a tragically flawed understanding of the strategies.
When dead bodies from gunfights at hospitals and schools start rolling onto CNN prime time, it's going to take a lot more than sending Jay Carney out to tapdance for the cameras and hope your presence patrols scare the insurgents into throwing down their weapons and begging for mercy.
*That's* the real danger; that the radicals on the far side of the spectrum who think they want this fight don't realize that you can't simply bomb Pearl Harbor, sail home and declare victory. You kick that dog and it's going to bite you and keep on biting you until one of your are dead.