“It is interesting to hear certain kinds of people insist that the citizen cannot fight the government. This would have been news to the men of Lexington and Concord, as well as the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The citizen most certainly can fight the government, and usually wins when he tries. Organized national armies are useful primarily for fighting against other organized national armies. When they try to fight against the people, they find themselves at a very serious disadvantage. If you will just look around at the state of the world today, you will see that the guerillero has the upper hand. Irregulars usually defeat regulars, providing they have the will. Such fighting is horrible to contemplate, but will continue to dominate brute strength.”
–Col. Jeff Cooper

When one discusses the real reason for the Second Amendment – the right of citizens to defend themselves against a potentially tyrannical government – inevitably someone points out the stark difference in firepower between a guerilla uprising in the United States and the United States government itself.

This is not a trivial observation. The U.S. government spends more on the military than the governments of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, United Kingdom, and Japan combined. Plus, the potential of a tyrannical government is arguably upon us – with the federal government spying on its own citizens, militarizing local police departments with equipment and tactics from the War on Terror, and repeatedly searching Americans, which desensitizes them to this invasive process.

There is much historical precedent, however, for guerilla uprisings defeating more powerful enemies. For instance, the Cold War saw both superpowers brought to their knees by rural farmers – for the Soviets, their adventure in Afghanistan against the Mujahideen, and for the United States, the Vietnam War against the Viet Cong.

In both cases, nuclear weapons could have been used against the guerilla uprising, but were not. Even assuming the use of nuclear weapons from the position of total desperation, it’s hard to imagine they would have made much of a difference in the final outcome of either conflict. Unlike the invading armies, the local resistance enjoyed both broad-based support as well as knowledge of the local terrain.

Asymmetrical Warfare and 4GW: America's Domestic Viet CongNow imagine such a scenario in the United States. You wouldn’t be the first person to do so. From Red Dawn to James Wesley, Rawles’ Patriots series, there is a relatively long-standing tradition of American survival literature about the hoi polloi resisting the tyranny of big government, either before or after a collapse.

For the purposes of this article, consider what a domestic American terrorist or freedom fighter (after all, the label is in the eye of the beholder) organization based on the militia movement would look like in open revolt against the United States government. In the spirit of levity, we’ll call them the “Hillbilly Viet Cong.” They would most likely find their largest numbers in Appalachia, but don’t discount their power in the American Redoubt, or the more sparsely populated areas of the American Southwest, including rural Texas.

Here we have tens of thousands of Americans armed to the teeth with combat experience, deep family ties to both the police and the military, extensive knowledge of the local geography, and, in many cases, survivalist training. Even where they are not trained, militant and active, they enjoy broad support among those who own a lot of guns and grow a lot of food.

On the other side, you have the unwieldy Baby Huey of the rump U.S. government’s military, with some snarky BuzzFeed editorials serving as propaganda.

Could the Hillbilly Viet Cong take down the USG? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s difficult to imagine that the USG could take them down.

Indeed, even with a number of nasty little toys on the side of the federal government, we live in an age of a technologically levelled playing field. This is true even when it comes to instruments of warfare. While the USG has nuclear weapons, it’s worth remembering that a pound of C4 strapped to a cheap and readily available commercial-grade drone is going to break a lot of dishes.

This sort of guerilla insurgency has a name: It’s called fourth-generational warfare (4GW), and you might be surprised to learn that you already live in this world.

Continue reading Asymmetrical Warfare and 4GW: How Militia Groups are America's Domestic Viet Cong at Ammo.com.

A very good and timely article.

The trouble with massive overwhelming forces are that while potent, they are slow and uncoordinated compared to smaller forces which know where to strike and then diffuse back into the landscape. It is David and Goliath.

Fighting against a force that has good air support would be hard.

Not impossible, obviously, but night vision/infrared equipped, armed planes and helicopters scare the hell out of me in this context. Plus the surveillance capacity of drones, satellites, radio transmissions, etc.

Very important article. Thanks for posting it.

Silent

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
Fighting against a force that has good air support would be hard.

They can't be everywhere.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
Fighting against a force that has good air support would be hard.

True, but how many pilots would do that? How many crew/maintenance chiefs would work on a/c whose pilots did that? How many people working on airfields would sit idly by watching a/c sortie without doing something? Lots of ways to ground a/c without even injuring anyone.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but in any sort of "hot" civil war, I'd like to think the military would be 1) busy with their own internal struggles, and 2) reluctant to start engaging civilians.

If the current political winds keeps blowing we may find ourselves in a position we have not been in 200+ years, that of a revolutionary. It's time to learn from our opponents.

Some light reading

Small wars, far away places

War of the flea

Fangs of the line wolf

Waging insurgent warfare

Fry the brain

I am sure I am forgetting many others

The other thing to remember about a US guerilla war would be that there are a lot of people in this country who know exactly how the military fights, and the limitations of their equipment.

quote:

Originally posted by Nuclear:
The other thing to remember about a US guerilla war would be that there are a lot of people in this country who know exactly how the military fights, and the limitations of their equipment.

Bear in mind too, home field advantage.
People defending their land know it better than any government analysis will. Lots of hollers, swamps, forests, and mountains with people who have been on them for generations.

And as my Vietnam veteran dad would say, I learned some things from Charlie......

I wonder if there will be a galvanizing event on the part pf BLM/Antifa that really gets people motivated to get rid of them.

A friend of mine said he lost support for the BLM when a young girl was killed near a BLM protest in Atlanta. I asked him how anyone could support an admittedly Marxist organization that wants to destroy the fabric of American Society.

quote:

Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:

quote:

Originally posted by Jimbo Jones:

A friend of mine said he lost support for the BLM when a young girl was killed near a BLM protest in Atlanta. I asked him how anyone could support an admittedly Marxist organization that wants to destroy the fabric of American Society.

It wasn't a protest. It was Atlanta's very own no-go autonomous zone just like Seattle's.

That day a mob of militia marched to Stone Mountain threatening violence. My best guess some of their members went back down to the zone to "patrol" and all hyped up to kill, murdered a little girl over a parking space. The mayor is silent, the police are doing nothing, the news is keeping quiet.

The thing is that a civil war wouldn’t have to be a protracted battle against our professional armed forces, even if none of those professional military forces sided with the rebels. If a band of American revolutionaries started killing all the members of Congress, the government could effectively collapse under its own weight. Seriously, not all of Congress is well protected. If a small shooting war started where Congress critters were the first primary targets, how long do you think it would take before the rest were willing to submit to a reconstruction of the government?

When our civil war occurred, it wasn’t particularly easy to get around. The government was more of a part time undertaking than what we know of our career politicians today. There wasn’t TV, internet and social media. Elected officials were at least as likely if not more so to be tending to their farms and personal lives. Today politicians spend more time in DC than anywhere else. People know where Congress members are or are going to be, and people can mobilize much easier. They would have difficulty hiding and therefore being safe. I truly believe that if a shooting Civil war was ever to occur in my lifetime in the US it would be in the form of a limited coup d’etas, not in a protracted military battle.

Watch what you say here, please.

Good article.

My biggest concern is the sheer amount of leftists who are now in our military. There’s a lot from speaking to my brother in law, who’s a Major in Intelligence, USMC. I’ve so spoken to officers in other branches who say the same.

I recently broke all ties with one of my best friends. It was hard, but he was spewing commie shit like it was the Bible. He also is a Marine officer, just graduated OCS.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Watch what you say here, please.

Good point Para. I will clarify for the record that I was in no way advocating or suggesting a particular course of action. Personally I still feel hopeful that we can as a nation become less fractured, see past our differences and pull together. My comments were mainly made to acknowledge that if things were to deteriorate in this country to the point of widespread violence, or more specifically violence directed towards a political goal other than anarchy, that there is no reason to believe that actions would be similar to those undertaken in the past in this or other countries. I think that every time I read an article or opinion such as that posted in the original post, it reminds me that sometimes past actions are poor predictors of future extreme circumstances.

A few months ago I came across a thread that made me think. In it a poster said something to the effect that “there is no way an unorganized unit could fight and actually win against an oppressive government here in the US”. I cannot remember the exact reply but it went sort of like this: “for the past two decades we have been sending young Americans into the best asymmetrical training area in the world. In Iraq and Afghanistan they have trained for and fought against the exact same enemy tactics you are saying they themselves cannot do. The vast majority of these guys are home now living normal lives but don’t think for a second they forgot the lessons they learned over there”.

UC Part 3.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
Fighting against a force that has good air support would be hard.

Not impossible, obviously, but night vision/infrared equipped, armed planes and helicopters scare the hell out of me in this context. Plus the surveillance capacity of drones, satellites, radio transmissions, etc.

Depends on the ROE and the appetite for collateral damage. The various insurgent groups in Iraq and ASTAN have demonstrated ways to use the ROE to negate the air/drone advantage.

Now if you were fighting against a country that doesn't have a strong value on human rights, doesn't care about collateral damage and has sufficient resources, yeah, it's scary.