Originally posted by JustinJ
Pointing out a lack of relevance is not "moving the goal posts".
You most certainly are moving the goal posts, because it is relevant. The point being made is that
any attack requires a response from the forces of the government. And government’s resources are finite. Even a single attack on a single target uses up a great many. When a government is subject to multiple attacks, it strains those finite resources, and may exceed them. You attempt to wave that away by saying “this doesn’t count because it’s not a government target.” Well sorry, nice try, but that’s moving the goal posts.
Originally posted by JustinJ
If you believe that it would just as easy to plant a bomb in a government building or military complex during a revolt in a police state then you might want to consider who has the honesty, or at least the reality problem.
Who said anything was going to be easy? If people are in a situation of active, armed resistance to their own government, it’s going to be anything
but easy. But “not easy” is a long, long way from “futile.”
Originally posted by JustinJ
A government would divert it's resources accordingly. So what? Having to hunt down multiple terrorists is a long way from being overthrown.
Here you are with that black/white thinking again. If it doesn’t result in the governments overthrow, it must be useless. Not by a long shot. I know you just hate it when I cite the example of the Irish War of Independence, so I’ll do it again.
When patrols couldn’t travel without being ambushed half the time, and when government officials couldn’t poke their noses out of their fortified enclaves without being shot, and when the harsh reprisals the British engaged in not only caused more and more people to join the Irish rebels, but it also caused widespread condemnation of Britain abroad, and even
tremendous loss of support for the government at home in Britain, it utterly crippled the ability of the British to administer that province of their empire.
The Irish didn’t throw the British out in any conventional military sense. There was no Battle of Yorktown there where the British acknowledged military defeat and surrendered. The Irish won
not a single large scale engagement. In fact, they avoided having any, lest there be a repeat of the disaster of 1916. All they inflicted were those bothersome little pinpricks you sneeringly dismiss as utterly useless. And yet, unable to govern the province of Ireland, and with popular opinion turning against them, and no prospect at all that the Irish were ever going to give up the struggle, the British decided to negotiate a peace, and the Irish effectively achieved independence.
Originally posted by JustinJ
No, they didn't. Probably had something to do with the fact that the vast bulk of their military was fighting the allied armies. Might also be because the allied armies eventually liberated those areas and countries. This is all really beside the point unless you are next going to tell me the partisans and resistance fighters were about to defeat the german army anyways.
They certainly made it impossible for the Germans to achieve victory, even in those places, like the Ukraine, where the Germans had initially been welcomed as liberators, and could have had the population spying and sabotaging
for them instead of against them.
In order to crush these groups, the Germans would have had to resort to genocidal measures, like the Soviets did against the Kulaks in the 1930s. Not every government is willing to go to such lengths. The more the people resist encroachments on their rights – like the right to bear arms, for instance – the less likely they are to wind up living under a government that
is willing to employ genocidal measures.
Originally posted by JustinJ
I'm pointing out an aspect which isn't convenient to your position. This analogy proves NOTHING
False. What it proves is that even a brutal dictatorship, determined to maintain order, can’t guard every target, and armed resistance will always be able to find some vulnerabilities to attack. Even a modern police state doesn’t have the omniscience to cover all is vulnerable spots at once.
Originally posted by JustinJ
Finality? Expressing my position and defending it is no more speaking with finality than any other here. When one diverts discussion to the debater rather than the debate, that is ad hominem.
You are speaking with finality. You have declared categorically that armed resistance in the modern age is useless, and we who entertain the idea are deluded fools living in a fantasy world. Statements don’t get much more final than that. And you have no practical experience whatever to base this authoritative pronouncement on.
Originally posted by JustinJ
Ahhh, i see. So if some with military experience aren't that "sharp" then why did you ask to begin with? You introduce it as a standard of being right but then back peddle when I mention that a person with an icredibly high amount of military experience and knowledge disagrees with your position. For the record, the man i mentioned holds a doctorate and is extremely "sharp".
First off, this is an appeal to authority fallacy. Even if I knew enough about this person to acknowledge his authority – and I
don’t – it would still be a fallacious argument from authority, because one so-called expert does not settle the matter in an arena in which there is no consensus, even among the experts. How do I know there is no consensus? Because in 1992, the United States declined to intervene in the conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina after an aide to General Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised the Senate Armed Services Committee that the widespread ownership of arms in the former Yugoslav republic made even limited intervention "perilous and deadly." He was certainly not dismissive of the difficulties that people with small arms could create for even the world’s most powerful military. Nor was Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie, who led United Nations peace keeping troops in Sarajevo for five months. He also warned how difficult and costly it would be to occupy the area, owing to the widespread ownership of small arms.
Second off, education and knowledge do not osmotically transfer from one person to another. Whatever he knows, he’s imparted no more than a tiny fraction of that knowledge to you. And for all I know, what he has transferred to you is
wrong. As I said, incompetent generals litter the pages of history. I have no way of knowing whether he belongs in their company or not.
So excuse me, but I am not remotely impressed by some unnamed source about whom I know nothing. And even if he is everything you say he is, it
still wouldn’t settle the matter.
Originally posted by JustinJ
No, i'm sure your specific fantasy is plenty unique.
There it is, speaking with finality.
Originally posted by JustinJ
I've clearly addressed war of attrition multiple times.
Only to dismiss the idea.
Originally posted by JustinJ
If foreign support is necessary, which I'm glad we agree upon…
We don’t. I don’t say it’s necessary. Not in an absolute sense at least. The Irish didn’t have any, and they still won. Benito Juarez didn’t have any against the French either, but he still threw them out of Mexico. Sometimes foreign help will be necessary. Other times not. There’s no absolute answer. Each case will depend on specific circumstances.
Originally posted by JustinJ
…then an armed populace shouldn't be necessary to deter tyranny to begin with. If it is possible that the rebel forces can get external or internal military aid to fight with then a government would be dettered from tyranny regardless.
Except in order to get foreign aid in the first place, you have to demonstrate that you can actually put up effective resistance (e.g. the French wouldn’t actively help the American revolutionaries until they won the decisive victory at Saratoga, and convinced the French that they might actually be able to win). You have to convince any prospective foreign supporters that you have the will and the capability to take effective action. That’s a lot easier to do when you’ve got some weaponry to start with.