Republicans are destroying their own party.

[Elok]

Small arms help keep the Afghans free. Unless you're retarded enough to think that we're winning over there.

The political, social and geographical conditions at play there are radically different from what would be faced by a rebellion against a tyrannical government in the U.S. We speak the same language as our army, they know our customs and culture, the army wouldn't have the option of pulling out like it does in Afghanistan, and of course our whole country isn't a mass of mountains and deserts with Infrastructure Deficiency Disorder.

Also, a genuinely tyrannical government would have much freer rules of engagement than we do in Afghanistan.

[Felch]

The army would have a tough time convincing the rednecks who form its backbone to go shoot their fellow rednecks. And the places with the most rednecks are the places with the absolute worst infrastructure in America, with mountains and wilderness just like Afghanistan.

[Sava]

I'm sure the army would fill its ranks by offering free citizenship to the Mexicans for their service.

[Elok]

The army would have a tough time convincing the rednecks who form its backbone to go shoot their fellow rednecks.

Which would make the small arms of said rednecks irrelevant. Army sides with them--they win. Army sides against them--they lose.

And the places with the most rednecks are the places with the absolute worst infrastructure in America, with mountains and wilderness just like Afghanistan.

Also the least relevant--that's why their infrastructure hasn't been developed. Choke off the supply routes and they'll die out, or fade to a minor annoyance as they live off the land. Certainly it wouldn't be hard to destroy their access to communication with the outside world, and with that done they're so isolated as to be powerless. If the army holds the big cities on either coast and all the important transport hubs in the interior, they just need to keep malcontents in WVA and such in their respective holes and cut off.

In Afghanistan, that's not a workable strategy, because pretty much the whole country is like that.

[Felch]

If the United States Army had to cut off supplies to half the country, it would be proof positive that the government had failed, it would trigger a collapse of our international arrangements, and the system that supports the tyranny would collapse.

[Sava]

If the United States Army had to cut off supplies to half the country, it would be proof positive that the government had failed, it would trigger a collapse of our international arrangements, and the system that supports the tyranny would collapse.

Depends who fires the first shot... and how bad.

If some group sets off a nuke in a city, I don't think many people would support their cause.

[Dinner]

I don't see any hypothetical rebellion in the US doing any better than the PKK did in Turkey over the last 30 years.

[Elok]

If the United States Army had to cut off supplies to half the country, it would be proof positive that the government had failed, it would trigger a collapse of our international arrangements, and the system that supports the tyranny would collapse.

"Half the country" isn't hyper-rugged, undeveloped wilderness. The majority of our population lives along either coast, and the majority of the remainder can be found in the accessible parts of the interior. You're talking about a handful of sparsely-populated nooks and crannies of the two mountain chains here. Cave in some passes, isolate the scanty comm connections (this can be largely, if not entirely, accomplished on a software level), crater an airport or two and you're done with the county. They could stumble out on foot if they like, or on ATVs while their gas held out, and maybe harass a rural outpost with their handguns. They couldn't coordinate effectively or cause real damage. The biggest inconvenience would be from losing some of the roads through the mountains; you'd have to route shipping a ways around to avoid the hee-haw commando types. And I guess you'd lose out on some mountain mines. No huge loss either way.

[Felch]

Turkey has roughly two civilian firearms for every one in government hands. America has 75 guns in civilian hands for every one held by the government.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/turkey

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states

There is absolutely no comparison between privately owned firearms in the US and anywhere else in the world. Somewhere between one third and one half of all guns in the entire world are privately owned by Americans.

[DaShi]

If the United States Army had to cut off supplies to half the country, it would be proof positive that the government had failed, it would trigger a collapse of our international arrangements, and the system that supports the tyranny would collapse.

Hmm, you bring up an interesting side-point. Would the rest of the world care about tyranny if the U.S. wasn't around to hammer down their throats how bad it is?

[Felch]

"Half the country" isn't hyper-rugged, undeveloped wilderness.

Living in Maryland it may be hard to believe, but a lot of America is ****ing empty.

[Felch]

Hmm, you bring up an interesting side-point. Would the rest of the world care about tyranny if the U.S. wasn't around to hammer down their throats how bad it is?

The rest of the world would certainly take a second American Civil War as an opportunity to overthrow our global empire. I think that much is likely.

[DaShi]

Not everyone. Several nations have a vested interest in our global empire. But yes, if we have another civil war, those dirty foreigners are sure to interfere.

[Elok]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]174514[/ATTACH]

Living in Maryland it may be hard to believe, but a lot of America is ****ing empty.

1. That says 1990. I'm willing to accept that the population distribution hasn't changed a whole lot since then, but
2. "Empty" does not mean "inaccessible." Indeed, many of the emptiest parts of that map are the most accessible; you could practically roll tanks right across Kansas side-by-side. The scattered population is easily isolated--I do know that from living on the Eastern Shore.
3. The reverse of 2. is not generally true. It's very hard to support a dense (and therefore strategically significant) population in real wilderness, since supplies have to be trucked in and the rough terrain impedes both said transport and communication infrastructure. Those bottlenecks are easily stoppered.

Now, there are some exceptions--parts of Appalachia are fairly remote and somewhat populated--but I've been through some of those parts of Appalachia and we're not talking natural fortresses here. If there are lots of people somewhere, there have to be lots of ways to move them and all the stuff they need. Simple as that.

[regexcellent]

Most of the mountain west is sparsely inhabited or totally uninhabited. The midwestern farm states are rural, so there are people around, but they're not all that close together. The southwestern deserts have a few medium and large cities like Albuquerque, Phoenix, and Las Vegas but otherwise are devoid of population. Alaska is uninhabited except for the panhandle, the Anchorage area, the southern coast, and a handful of settlements here and there.

West of the Mississippi, there's not a whole lot of people until you get to the coasts/PacNW.