Comment by HNisCIS
12 hours ago
The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders, they sure as fuck can't handle the most armed country in history.
The question is how many people will side with them vs reality.
12 hours ago
The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders, they sure as fuck can't handle the most armed country in history.
The question is how many people will side with them vs reality.
> The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders…
The American military at the time cared - at least somewhat - about the international reputation of the United States. That may not always be a thing. It may not be a thing now.
The American military is designed to operate away from its shores. One hunting rifle round into the transformer outside of the bases and they're trucking in fuel for generators, a few rounds into the fuel trucks and they have no power. They would have to mobilize massive resources to secure Lockheed and Raytheon facilities from sabotage...
Keep thinking along these lines and you realize the situation for them is actually quite dire.
[dead]
The American military would have zero problems massacring an unlimited number of rice farmers and goat herders.
They absolutely did, and yet still lost both wars horribly.
> The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders
Where can I read more about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...
Yeah, but... the quoted phrase should not be taken literally as a statement about battlefield capability.
It was a political struggle for legitimacy, not just territory, and the enemy did not have to win any battles, just avoid losing until the political will collapsed.
The thing is, military power does not automatically translate to political success, and guerrilla fighters do not need to defeat tanks and jets, they just need to survive, persist, undermine legitimacy, and exhaust the opponent's political will.
So, in this sense, the US was not beaten by farmers, it was beaten by a strategy that made military superiority irrelevant.
2 replies →
>The American military couldn't handle rice farmers or goat herders
Eh, they killed them by the hundreds of thousands, and were not even trying to genocide them. If the current regime decided to actually just exterminate people our level of technology would make what the Nazis did look like babies playtime.
>The question is how many people will side with them vs reality
At least 40% of the population given what we've seen so far.
We'll find out I suppose, the Iranian government is currently seeking the answer to that question experimentally.