Reddit reviews Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present

I understand this is reddit but, Honestly are you just repeating what you have heard people say or do you understand how guerrilla warfare and insurgencies work and their history? There is a vast amount of material to study on this subject and many history lessons (https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Armies-History-Guerrilla-Warfare-ebook/dp/B007P9M034) <great book on the subject and multiple expanses of how extremely hard insurgencies are to fight and why governments usually always lose in them including the United States. If the US military wanted to destroy the entire country and have just ashes left then yes they could win but, thats not what would happen and history shows us that. Tyrannical rulers do not want to rule over ashes.

Can you identify and address the moral, cultural, geographical, economic, and infrastructural problems the US government would face if it turned on its own armed populace?

A few examples would be...

Do you think our volunteer army (composed of citizens) would actually kill their fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, and fellow veterans just because they were ordered to (especially when most are there just to get a few years in and free college) ?

The US military only needs to lose 20% of its man power to become seriously degraded and at 30% becomes combat ineffective (source below). That means only 2/10 people would have to refuse to fight. If we can use Vietnam as a comparison for the unwillingness to fight an unjust war then, we know the tyrannical US government would be facing major problems right there

https://index.heritage.org/military/2016/assessments/us-military-power/

Would the militaries civilian contractors and logistics arm continue to do the same?

Would regular citizens continue to produce the massive commercial productions of oil, food, munitions, etc... that are helping fuel the military that is killing and/or oppressing their own families?

According to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey – the leading source of international public information about firearms – the U.S. has the best-armed civilian population in the world, with an estimated 270 million total guns. That’s an average of 90 firearms for every 100 resident. Do you know the history of governments trying to fight an insurgency that is way less armed (from your comment, you do not)?

Can you explain why the United States has never been able to win a counter insurgency war but, for some reason you think they would be able to win the one against their own populace which is heavier armed and more well trained than any in the history of warfare?

> These are all very rare occurrences in history and generally deal with inhospitable terrain and other factors that would have made it rather irrelevant here.

Nope. Guerrilla warfare was well understood in both the ancient and medieval world and became an increasingly frequent feature of conflict with the rise of gunpowder.

Here is the in depth wiki article on the subject.

Here is a work arguing that guerrilla warfare has been a defining feature of human conflict.

Beyond that there was a long standing tradition of guerrilla warfare in the America's stretching back to the Spanish expeditions in the mid 1500's. It was extensively practiced by the French and Indian war. In fact during the American Civil war it was practiced, the border regions Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee became hotbeds of low scale guerrilla conflict that later spawned more organized guerrilla units like Quantrill's Raiders.

Terrain most certainly would be a factor. The south has several mountainous regions, deep forests, extensive rivers etc. Beyond that the real advantage of terrain in Guerrilla warfare is that one side typically has a much more intimate knowledge of the area than the other, giving them more tactical options in relation to maneuver. The terrain need not be difficult itself for locals with an excellent knowledge of it to make it difficult for an occupying force.

>Guerrillas need to eat.

Everyone needs to eat. This isn't really a relevant statement the way you think it is. Typically Guerrilla forces don't require the extensive supply trains that standing conventional armies do to keep fed. Guerrillas typically source the provisions from local support, raiding, and foraging. Beyond that you are talking about the South in a time when the majority of it's populace practiced sustenance level agriculture, it would have been very feasible to keep small units fed than it would have been a standing army.
The Confederacy's trouble supplying it's armies was partially based on it's poor internal infrastructure and inability to transport what goods they had. This isn't the same kind of concern for a small force operating out of a localized area.

>Why not? The transcontinental railroad was built with less pomp and circumstance than you're proposing here.

No it wasn't. The transcontinental railroad was a massive undertaking that required tremendous funding, manpower, and planning.

>The north's moral position was that the south unconstitutionally tried to leave the union, and that then the south instigated a war. That position is unassailable.

The North's moral position was rooted in a political conflict over slavery. Had slavery not been the issue at hand it would have difficult to garner the support to continue the war in the early years as the North suffered a string of defeats in the first two years of the conflict that saw many wanting to draw a peace with the south. It required a great deal of political maneuvering and an involving of many church networks in the north to drive home the idea of the war as a moral issue of more than just succession. Turning around and selling off Confederate soldiers likely would have caused a crisis of public perception in a populace already shaken by the assassination of President Lincoln.

And it worked, until Maliki's horrible governance undid everything we achieved. "Hearts and minds" is a key tenet of any successful counterinsurgency; it's why the surge was successful, it's why the British in Malaya were successful, and its absence was why Vietnam was such a disastrous campaign.

If you want to learn more about insurgencies and how they are defeated, I'd strongly recommend checking out this book.

Europe

Its a geopolitical history of the continent, not a social one. Not much on say, slavery, but a lot on shifting alliances and battles for position or power.


Private Empire: Exxon-Mobile and American Power

Big Oil & US foreign policy

Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present

goes into the difference between regular wars and guerrilla wars, sort of a history with tons of short chapters focusing on different wars, starts with Rome vs the jewish rebels

If such a day comes to pass, then it will be up to the American people to usurp him from power by any means necessary. In the mean time, here are some reading materials that can help you prepare:

https://www.amazon.com/Mao-Tse-Tung-Guerrilla-Warfare-ebook/dp/B06XGK2VGV/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Mao+Tse-Tung+On+Guerrilla+Warfare&qid=1557026053&s=digital-text&sr=1-1-catcorr

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117031.On_War

https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Weapon-Sabotage-Fear-Cyber-ebook/dp/B076Z29HG7/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=david+e+sanger&qid=1557026075&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Armies-History-Guerrilla-Warfare-ebook/dp/B007P9M034/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=invisible+armies&qid=1557026103&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-Manual-ebook/dp/B002RHOOW4/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=petraeus&qid=1557026162&s=digital-text&sr=1-3