Seattle Central Community College Riot

[leftcider]

Quote by: castille Personally I think fascism is a pretty damned good philosophy for the army. Obedience, order, loyalty, and most importantly, strength - who can defeat such an army?

A guerilla force (often much more loosely organized than your "fascist army") can defeat such an army and has done so before. Soldiers following orders to commit atrocities such as the killing of innocents do not win wars, but give strength to guerilla armies fighting against them. I believe soldiers on the ground often know the situation better than the brass they are placed under. Fascism assumes "authority knows best", but when your top commanders really have no idea how to win the war (i.e. Vietnam, Iraq), an army disciplined to the orders of the foolish and clueless is bound to fail.

[G. Adams]

leftcider, your examples of guerillas defeating standing armies is unfitting. A strong, experienced military could defeat a guerilla force providing it had the will and ruthlesness neccesary to do so. A standing army fighting a guerilla army changes the conditions of war for the standing army, and in order to win would have to be prepared to commit atrocious acts. In Vietnam, the US military was hampered at one level by political machinations above it, and also the will of the soldiers fighting. If the US military believed in it's cause to the extent the Viet Minh guerillas did, they could have won. But they didn't.

Winning war is about being able to do what the other cannot.

[Mr.Vicchio]

Falluja could easily have been won withhout a single US Casualty. A flight of 12 B-52's in 4 ship formation, carrying 110 500lbs iron bombs... do three runs and.. 660,000lbs of high explosives spread evenly across the city... no more insurgents.

But the political cost of doing that was far too high. Thus we had to go door to door and fight on the ground. Every stray bomb, every malfunctioning cruise missle is a head line "US MILITARY KILLS CIVILIANS!" Now imagine if we had carpet bombed that city into rubble?

[leftcider]

Ruthless tactics are not acceptable in wars where you are fighting to "save" the population rather than defend yourself. And no, even the most ruthless conventional standing army can be defeated and severly hampered by guerillas. Look at Yugoslavia during World War II. Despite their policies of executing large numbers of civilians in "reprisal raids" and being absolutely ruthless, the Germans never defeated the Partisan guerillas, who grew along with the anger at the heavy handed Nazi tactics.

Quote by: G. Adams leftcider, your examples of guerillas defeating standing armies is unfitting. A strong, experienced military could defeat a guerilla force providing it had the will and ruthlesness neccesary to do so. A standing army fighting a guerilla army changes the conditions of war for the standing army, and in order to win would have to be prepared to commit atrocious acts. In Vietnam, the US military was hampered at one level by political machinations above it, and also the will of the soldiers fighting. If the US military believed in it's cause to the extent the Viet Minh guerillas did, they could have won. But they didn't. Winning war is about being able to do what the other cannot.

[G. Adams]

I never said anything about saving populations, I am talking about winning in war. Saving populations is a political goal, not a military one, and it is these additional goals a guerilla force can use to it's advantage to win.

Thinking militarily, a guerilla force is dependant upon the civilian population in order to continue. This is the most basic fact of guerilla warfare. Therefore, a state must, either through conversion or destruction, end this relationship between civillian and guerilla. It is like the arms factories and a state military, if you want to stop an army you cut off it's supplies. With guerillas, you cut out their supporters.

I would argue that the German war machine was well capable of taking on the guerillas if they were prepared to take sufficient action. If stopping the guerillas was my only goal, I would have gone town to town bombing it into dust, and burning every field the country has. A long operation, but within the capability of the German military. It is because there are additional political aims that need to be achieved that the guerilla can play upon. Germany wanted a country to take over, not a wasteland, and it wanted a population to work for it, at least for the duration of the war. From a purely military standpoint, an army who's goal is only victory over all it's enemies, it is possible to do pretty much anything as long as there are no opposing regular armies. I am not reccomending these actions, simply highlighting how it could be done.

Show me a time when a guerilla force has won outright against a state prepared to do anything to stop it? It doesn't happen.

[Pooeypants]

Quote by: Mr.Vicchio Falluja could easily have been won withhout a single US Casualty. A flight of 12 B-52's in 4 ship formation, carrying 110 500lbs iron bombs... do three runs and.. 660,000lbs of high explosives spread evenly across the city... no more insurgents. But the political cost of doing that was far too high. Thus we had to go door to door and fight on the ground. Every stray bomb, every malfunctioning cruise missle is a head line "US MILITARY KILLS CIVILIANS!" Now imagine if we had carpet bombed that city into rubble?

I didn't know that carpet bombing cities were still a viable solution, unless in extreme cases ofc but the place still had civilians in.

Anyway, can we get back on topic please?

[castille]

Germany actually dealt very well with their gurellias. Despite the myths of the "Duke Nukem-like" gurellia, most anti-Nazi gurellias were actually ineffective and did very little to hamper Germany.

Just look at the major gurellia events in World War 2. The biggest, Poland's Warsaw Uprising, was defeated easily (despite the fact the Germans were already losing the war). French Resistance did very little, except occasionally support the Allied troops and relay petty information. Even in Yugoslavia, they barely managed to dent the German forces.

One major element for Germany's success against gurellias was fear. People were scared to act; even if they didn't care about their own lives, they could endanger their families and friends by being a gurellia.

Gurellias of World War 2 are often given too much hype, using rare events and "victories" to boost their credibility. The fact is, Germany was able to scare most of the occupied people into obedience. After all, you're not scared of US soldiers because they have orders to act nice (so if you walk up to them with a bomb hidden under your jacket, they wont be likely to shoot). Now the Germans...