The more I think about it, the fewer reasons I can think of to pick up a weapon. Genocide would be a given. Forcing citizens into ghettos and seizing their property might do it. Unconstitutional acts wouldn't. I haven't pledged my life in defense of the Constitution or anything so I'd protest a breach but I wouldn't pick up a weapon over it.
Even pledging to die for something doesn't necessarily mean you're pledging to kill for it.
I guess it was inevitable that this thread would turn into a nationalistic dick-waving contest
Yes yes America is special and unique and magic and it could totally nuke the planet harder then any other superpower and there would totally be a situation where China and Russia wouldn't ally and oh look WW3 might as well start launching nukes like a freshman girl does tequila shots.
So insurrection, thoughts on the Iraqi duders who took up arms against the American-installed government?
I guess it was inevitable that this thread would turn into a nationalistic dick-waving contest
Yes yes America is special and unique and magic and it could totally nuke the planet harder then any other superpower and there would totally be a situation where China and Russia wouldn't ally and oh look WW3 might as well start launching nukes like a freshman girl does tequila shots.
So insurrection, thoughts on the Iraqi duders who took up arms against the American-installed government?
I don't consider it a point of pride that my nation is better at indiscriminately destroying things than any other task, how the hell is it dick-waving to say that though? America is good at that, we're fucking artists at blowing up whole towns and then cheering because we killed 2 terroists and 74 civilians
America has spent the GDP of a good sized nation for the last half century dedicated towards preparing for that task. Which, as you pointed out, isn't ever going to happen. It's actually pretty stupid. Pointing out that we have a naval force best suited for engaging half the planet in warfare is a mark against the united states, not for it, especially with our infrastructure and social safety net in such disarray.
I guess it was inevitable that this thread would turn into a nationalistic dick-waving contest
Yes yes America is special and unique and magic and it could totally nuke the planet harder then any other superpower and there would totally be a situation where China and Russia wouldn't ally and oh look WW3 might as well start launching nukes like a freshman girl does tequila shots.
So insurrection, thoughts on the Iraqi duders who took up arms against the American-installed government?
I don't consider it a point of pride that my nation is better at indiscriminately destroying things than any other task, how the hell is it dick-waving to say that though? America is good at that, we're fucking artists at blowing up whole towns and then cheering because we killed 2 terroists and 74 civilians
You mean 76 suspected terrorists.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
I guess it was inevitable that this thread would turn into a nationalistic dick-waving contest
Yes yes America is special and unique and magic and it could totally nuke the planet harder then any other superpower and there would totally be a situation where China and Russia wouldn't ally and oh look WW3 might as well start launching nukes like a freshman girl does tequila shots.
So insurrection, thoughts on the Iraqi duders who took up arms against the American-installed government?
I don't consider it a point of pride that my nation is better at indiscriminately destroying things than any other task, how the hell is it dick-waving to say that though? America is good at that, we're fucking artists at blowing up whole towns and then cheering because we killed 2 terroists and 74 civilians
You mean 76 suspected terrorists.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
Wow, that is the most succinct and best way I've heard it point.
In fact, if we were better at decision making, we wouldn't be so good at war
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
I guess it was inevitable that this thread would turn into a nationalistic dick-waving contest
Yes yes America is special and unique and magic and it could totally nuke the planet harder then any other superpower and there would totally be a situation where China and Russia wouldn't ally and oh look WW3 might as well start launching nukes like a freshman girl does tequila shots.
So insurrection, thoughts on the Iraqi duders who took up arms against the American-installed government?
I don't consider it a point of pride that my nation is better at indiscriminately destroying things than any other task, how the hell is it dick-waving to say that though? America is good at that, we're fucking artists at blowing up whole towns and then cheering because we killed 2 terroists and 74 civilians
You mean 76 suspected terrorists.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
Wow, that is the most succinct and best way I've heard it point.
In fact, if we were better at decision making, we wouldn't be so good at war
Perhaps, though if we actually displayed some restraint in using our military at least we could take some pride in our effectiveness when we really did unleash it. I don't mind living in a country with the strongest force humanity has ever seen, I just hate when we use it terribly.
To try and move back towards the topic with some connective-text here
The national attitude that leads us to consider the ability to engage multiple current allies in warfare more important than having a good system of roads is probably the reason there are so many militia groups.
It's a problem that has persisted since the cold war inexplicably, and really needs to be taken out and shot. If the US stopped focusing so much on its military as a point of pride would such nationalistic organizations fade any?
I don't think the ideology itself from those groups would fade much, a lot of it is based on glorification of the Revolutionary War. But reducing the numbers of disaffected ex-US-military members would likely make them take a hit as far as group strength and threat level.
That could probably stand its own topic, our military has a habit of putting guys through the meat grinder and sticking them back into society proper and not giving a shit where they go after that, often with severe mental conditions
That could probably stand its own topic, our military has a habit of putting guys through the meat grinder and sticking them back into society proper and not giving a shit where they go after that, often with severe mental conditions
Isn't that where the first motorcycle gangs came from?
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}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
The more I think about it, the fewer reasons I can think of to pick up a weapon. Genocide would be a given. Forcing citizens into ghettos and seizing their property might do it. Unconstitutional acts wouldn't. I haven't pledged my life in defense of the Constitution or anything so I'd protest a breach but I wouldn't pick up a weapon over it.
Even pledging to die for something doesn't necessarily mean you're pledging to kill for it.
I can see that. Pledging your life in defense of the Constitution could mean you work 18 hour days helping to build a legal case against a violation. No boomsticks required.
The more I think about it, the fewer reasons I can think of to pick up a weapon. Genocide would be a given. Forcing citizens into ghettos and seizing their property might do it. Unconstitutional acts wouldn't. I haven't pledged my life in defense of the Constitution or anything so I'd protest a breach but I wouldn't pick up a weapon over it.
This.
Also, I could see two different reasons of armed rising. One where there are massive differences along geographic lines and one where most citizens rise up against an oppressive higher class/government.
I can't imagine either one really happening in the US unless time traveling space zombie Hitler takes over the executive branch.
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No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
The more I think about it, the fewer reasons I can think of to pick up a weapon. Genocide would be a given. Forcing citizens into ghettos and seizing their property might do it. Unconstitutional acts wouldn't. I haven't pledged my life in defense of the Constitution or anything so I'd protest a breach but I wouldn't pick up a weapon over it.
This.
Also, I could see two different reasons of armed rising. One where there are massive differences along geographic lines and one where most citizens rise up against an oppressive higher class/government.
I can't imagine either one really happening in the US unless time traveling space zombie Hitler takes over the executive branch.
Likewise. That's why I stated that it would really take multiple personal tragedies at the hands of authorities to get me to go nutso-berserko. You'd have to like take my family away or something. Because jesus christ the last thing I ever ever want to do is hurt people. Especially over some concepts that the Founders couldn't completely agree on. That's probably one of the most damaging things the ultraconservative right puts forward. That the Founders were some kind of monolithic hive-mind that got everything perfect.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
No we're not. Genghis Khan was good at war, and that's how he pacified Afghanistan.
We're good pulling some penny ante semi-war bullshit that doesn't really do anything while costing an assload of money and pissing everyone off. America hasn't been good at war since 1945.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
No we're not. Genghis Khan was good at war, and that's how he pacified Afghanistan.
We're good pulling some penny ante semi-war bullshit that doesn't really do anything while costing an assload of money and pissing everyone off. America hasn't been good at war since 1945.
Can't we both be good at war?
And the second part goes pretty far into what I said when I said "We're really really bad at decision making".
That we blow up wedding parties from thousands of miles away doesn't make us bad at it. It just means we're horrible at deciding when to do it.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
No we're not. Genghis Khan was good at war, and that's how he pacified Afghanistan.
We're good pulling some penny ante semi-war bullshit that doesn't really do anything while costing an assload of money and pissing everyone off. America hasn't been good at war since 1945.
Can't we both be good at war?
And the second part goes pretty far into what I said when I said "We're really really bad at decision making".
That we blow up wedding parties from thousands of miles away doesn't make us bad at it. It just means we're horrible at deciding when to do it.
Our decision-making makes us bad at war because we try to conduct it humanely (read: half-heartedly), when it's inherently inhumane. That speaks higher of us ethically in comparison to Genghis Khan, but not in terms of the effective waging of war. The most effective way to pacify someone is to kill them.
How about America is the best at total, conventional war, and bad at anything to do with enemies who aren't afraid of people killing them because five other empires already tried to do it before. Or a motivated insurgency. Which is what everybody is bad at. I mean, isn't this sort of an accepted fact? Nobody is good at fighting the kind of wars America is fighting right now.
Frankly, given that America accounts for at least (and by some measurements, more than) half of the entire world's military expenditures, and for....6% of the world's population, I think?....America better be goddamn fucking awesome at war. In fact, that's still an insufficient way to describe it.
For that kind of money, the entire War on Terror could be declared an unbridled success tomorrow, and I'd still be a little disappointed.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
No we're not. Genghis Khan was good at war, and that's how he pacified Afghanistan.
We're good pulling some penny ante semi-war bullshit that doesn't really do anything while costing an assload of money and pissing everyone off. America hasn't been good at war since 1945.
Can't we both be good at war?
And the second part goes pretty far into what I said when I said "We're really really bad at decision making".
That we blow up wedding parties from thousands of miles away doesn't make us bad at it. It just means we're horrible at deciding when to do it.
Our decision-making makes us bad at war because we try to conduct it humanely (read: half-heartedly), when it's inherently inhumane. That speaks higher of us ethically in comparison to Genghis Khan, but not in terms of the effective waging of war. The most effective way to pacify someone is to kill them.
We're good at projecting power, we're terrible at deciding how and when.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
No we're not. Genghis Khan was good at war, and that's how he pacified Afghanistan.
We're good pulling some penny ante semi-war bullshit that doesn't really do anything while costing an assload of money and pissing everyone off. America hasn't been good at war since 1945.
Can't we both be good at war?
And the second part goes pretty far into what I said when I said "We're really really bad at decision making".
That we blow up wedding parties from thousands of miles away doesn't make us bad at it. It just means we're horrible at deciding when to do it.
Our decision-making makes us bad at war because we try to conduct it humanely (read: half-heartedly), when it's inherently inhumane. That speaks higher of us ethically in comparison to Genghis Khan, but not in terms of the effective waging of war. The most effective way to pacify someone is to kill them.
We're good at projecting power, we're terrible at deciding how and when.
No we're not. Our morals, combined with increased awareness of the ugliness of war, prevent us from projecting it effectively. We couldn't even get some 2-bit thug out of Mogadishu because we flinch at the sight of dead Marines being dragged through the streets. We're no longer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be good at war - not only in terms of humans lost, but in terms of humanity lost.
I think that's to our credit morally, but it also condemns us to waging the ineffective "They're our mortal enemy but let's not waterboard them or beat them up or blow up their house if there are innocent bystanders who'll get caught in the blast" type of campaigns we've been stuck in since WWII.
I think that's to our credit morally, but it also condemns us to waging the ineffective "They're our mortal enemy but let's not waterboard them or beat them up or blow up their house if there are innocent bystanders who'll get caught in the blast" type of campaigns we've been stuck in since WWII.
The US certainly had no problem carpet bombing north vietnam and cambodia. And waterboarding only stopped last year.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
No we're not. Genghis Khan was good at war, and that's how he pacified Afghanistan.
We're good pulling some penny ante semi-war bullshit that doesn't really do anything while costing an assload of money and pissing everyone off. America hasn't been good at war since 1945.
Can't we both be good at war?
And the second part goes pretty far into what I said when I said "We're really really bad at decision making".
That we blow up wedding parties from thousands of miles away doesn't make us bad at it. It just means we're horrible at deciding when to do it.
Our decision-making makes us bad at war because we try to conduct it humanely (read: half-heartedly), when it's inherently inhumane. That speaks higher of us ethically in comparison to Genghis Khan, but not in terms of the effective waging of war. The most effective way to pacify someone is to kill them.
We're good at projecting power, we're terrible at deciding how and when.
No we're not. Our morals, combined with increased awareness of the ugliness of war, prevent us from projecting it effectively. We couldn't even get some 2-bit thug out of Mogadishu because we flinch at the sight of dead Marines being dragged through the streets. We're no longer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be good at war - not only in terms of humans lost, but in terms of humanity lost.
I think that's to our credit morally, but it also condemns us to waging the ineffective "They're our mortal enemy but let's not waterboard them or beat them up or blow up their house if there are innocent bystanders who'll get caught in the blast" type of campaigns we've been stuck in since WWII.
I'm inclined to agree and disagree. What we've lost isn't our ability to commit atrocities as much as it is our ability to withstand them when carried out on us. The example you chose illustrate this perfectly; The problem isn't a bystander getting caught in the cross fire while freeing Mogadishu of those fucking savage excuses for human beings, the problem is that "our boys" died while doing it.
Which in turn leads to tactical doctrines which emphasizes a lack of military causalties - as military causalties make the public opinion back home want to end the war - causing civilian causalties that instead makes the political goals the war is set out to pursue unattainable. Killing innocent bystanders is a fucking bad idea in "assymetricalal warfare" where tomorrows combattants are yesterdays innocent bystanders, as they had to watch their wife, husband, brother or father die while doing something competely innocent. In an all out, we-need-to-preserve-our-fighting-strenght-or-there-will-be-no-tomorrow, ones ability and willingness to commit atrocities might matter. For the type of wars the west is involved in these days however... The reasons for the wars are not all-out survival, the political goals are long-term as are the problems they attempt to solve. At that point, withstanding atrocities is a hell of a lot more important than committing them.
I feel that if the government interfered in my life in such a way that I could not maintain what I consider to be an acceptable standard of living I would consider revolution. If my standard of living dropped to the point that it was no longer a standard of living by any reasonable definition, then it would be time to take up arms.
Many revolutions in the past were driven by a downtrodden mass rising up against the "oppressors" due to unacceptably low standards of living. I don't think this is likely to occur in the US now or at any time in the foreseeable future, because the US Government is very good at making sure the dole is available to the poor, thus both buying their votes and maintaining a minimum standard of living that is found acceptable.
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
edited December 2010
Where is this "dole" in the US? Me and mine are in a bit of rough shape right now. We could really use some help.
We've got the worst fucking safety net in the developed world.
No we're not. Our morals, combined with increased awareness of the ugliness of war, prevent us from projecting it effectively. We couldn't even get some 2-bit thug out of Mogadishu because we flinch at the sight of dead Marines being dragged through the streets. We're no longer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be good at war - not only in terms of humans lost, but in terms of humanity lost.
And once we get in a serious war, one where our nation's well being is truly on the line, like a war with China you'll find pretty quickly we're not going to care so much and the full weight of Americas incredibly powerful military is brought to bare.
You're right to say that our squeamishness towards war is a good thing, especially when we have so much capacity for destruction, but once full war breaks out its going out the window.
And once we get in a serious war, one where our nation's well being is truly on the line, like a war with China you'll find pretty quickly we're not going to care so much and the full weight of Americas incredibly powerful military is brought to bare.
You're right to say that our squeamishness towards war is a good thing, especially when we have so much capacity for destruction, but once full war breaks out its going out the window.
Alien invasion. Dealing with a likely technologically advanced foe that may or may not also possess overwhelming numbers and firepower, and quite possibly even a first strike advantage, depending on how they make their approach and what they want. Obviously for whatever reason they'd need to desire Earth remain relatively un-obliterated, otherwise the whole "hurl a couple of extinction level event astroids at us" makes it a very short and one sided fight, but under such circumstances it would be interesting (read: horrifying) to see what the nations of the world could do together, and what technologies might be deployed. You've just got to assume that DARPA has some big Applied Sciences Warhouse with a bunch of shit that's either deemed too expensive per unit, or too hard to mass produce to waste on a simple conflict like the ones we generally see.
I'm calling it now. Power Armour.
But this is drfiting away from the topic of armed insurrection. I have to agree with others that it's unlikely we'll see anything on that scale in the near future unless something truly extraordinary occurs. ... maybe Texas decides to actually break away, and maybe grab a couple of nearby states while they're at it, whether they want to come along or not? I simply cannot fathom a 'civilian' level insurrection occuring in this day and age within the US. Well, I can imagine it happening, but as pointed out above, I can also imagine it being quelled within the hour.
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First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Are civilian casualties actually any lower right now, when you take into account the comparatively smaller sizes of the forces we're fighting?
Yes, they are, by a ridiculous degree. The "Iraqis dead" numbers reported in the media are overwhelmingly the result of Iraqi on Iraqi violence, intentional or collateral. Plus if we really want to nitpick which casualties the US military is responsible for we'd not count everyone mercenaries kill.
Anyway, the point is if you compare this to WW2 where German and Japanese cities were turned in firestorms then I think you can see the difference. Hell no one even questioning terror bombing as being a step too far until Dresden and I don't think journalists ever cared about burning Japanese cities.
We've gone from purposefully targeting enemy civillians to attack morale to only killing civillians as collateral damage or by mistake.
Many revolutions in the past were driven by a downtrodden mass rising up against the "oppressors" due to unacceptably low standards of living. I don't think this is likely to occur in the US now or at any time in the foreseeable future, because the US Government is very good at making sure the dole is available to the poor, thus both buying their votes and maintaining a minimum standard of living that is found acceptable.
That's actually not true. Societies with poor standards of living actually don't produce many revolutions. They often produce revolutionary movements - i.e. rebel/criminals in the jungle, breakaway provinces - but the majority of revolutions come from either rising or falling segments of society.
The French Revolution is a good example of revolt by a rising class. During the French Revolution, the revolution was bankrolled by merchants who had seen their fortunes rise because of the expansion of trade and the early Industrial Revolution. The noble classes kept ratcheting up taxes and creating laws that held down the growing number of wealthy "commoners", to the point that those commoners joined with the truly poor who also were cool with the idea of decapitating nobles.
The rise of Nazi Germany is an example of revolution by a class that feels downward mobility. The Nazi revolution - which it was, albeit with the final shots fired at the ballot box - happened because you had a prosperous Western middle and working class nation suddenly experiencing massive poverty, financial uncertainty, unemployment, foreign occupation by French forces and incompetent leadership. Comfortable people suddenly found themselves in a position where they felt they could lose everything they had and supported a party that claimed it could take back "what belonged to them."
The Russian Revolution has aspects of both of these, plus other contradictory factors. Again, though, you had successful professionals, artists and other "outcast" up-and-comers versus a decaying nobility.
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Even pledging to die for something doesn't necessarily mean you're pledging to kill for it.
Yes yes America is special and unique and magic and it could totally nuke the planet harder then any other superpower and there would totally be a situation where China and Russia wouldn't ally and oh look WW3 might as well start launching nukes like a freshman girl does tequila shots.
So insurrection, thoughts on the Iraqi duders who took up arms against the American-installed government?
Isn't that sort of objective fact?
I don't consider it a point of pride that my nation is better at indiscriminately destroying things than any other task, how the hell is it dick-waving to say that though? America is good at that, we're fucking artists at blowing up whole towns and then cheering because we killed 2 terroists and 74 civilians
America has spent the GDP of a good sized nation for the last half century dedicated towards preparing for that task. Which, as you pointed out, isn't ever going to happen. It's actually pretty stupid. Pointing out that we have a naval force best suited for engaging half the planet in warfare is a mark against the united states, not for it, especially with our infrastructure and social safety net in such disarray.
You mean 76 suspected terrorists.
Let's face it guys, America is really really good at war. We're just really really bad at decision making.
Wow, that is the most succinct and best way I've heard it point.
In fact, if we were better at decision making, we wouldn't be so good at war
Yeah, but it's kind of pointless when you are talking about overkilling destroying everything.
Also way off topic.
Perhaps, though if we actually displayed some restraint in using our military at least we could take some pride in our effectiveness when we really did unleash it. I don't mind living in a country with the strongest force humanity has ever seen, I just hate when we use it terribly.
The national attitude that leads us to consider the ability to engage multiple current allies in warfare more important than having a good system of roads is probably the reason there are so many militia groups.
It's a problem that has persisted since the cold war inexplicably, and really needs to be taken out and shot. If the US stopped focusing so much on its military as a point of pride would such nationalistic organizations fade any?
Isn't that where the first motorcycle gangs came from?
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I can see that. Pledging your life in defense of the Constitution could mean you work 18 hour days helping to build a legal case against a violation. No boomsticks required.
This.
Also, I could see two different reasons of armed rising. One where there are massive differences along geographic lines and one where most citizens rise up against an oppressive higher class/government.
I can't imagine either one really happening in the US unless time traveling space zombie Hitler takes over the executive branch.
Likewise. That's why I stated that it would really take multiple personal tragedies at the hands of authorities to get me to go nutso-berserko. You'd have to like take my family away or something. Because jesus christ the last thing I ever ever want to do is hurt people. Especially over some concepts that the Founders couldn't completely agree on. That's probably one of the most damaging things the ultraconservative right puts forward. That the Founders were some kind of monolithic hive-mind that got everything perfect.
No we're not. Genghis Khan was good at war, and that's how he pacified Afghanistan.
We're good pulling some penny ante semi-war bullshit that doesn't really do anything while costing an assload of money and pissing everyone off. America hasn't been good at war since 1945.
Can't we both be good at war?
And the second part goes pretty far into what I said when I said "We're really really bad at decision making".
That we blow up wedding parties from thousands of miles away doesn't make us bad at it. It just means we're horrible at deciding when to do it.
Eh. We do it well. We just do it at the wrong time.
Its not worth debating over to be honest.
Yeah, I can agree with this.
Our decision-making makes us bad at war because we try to conduct it humanely (read: half-heartedly), when it's inherently inhumane. That speaks higher of us ethically in comparison to Genghis Khan, but not in terms of the effective waging of war. The most effective way to pacify someone is to kill them.
Frankly, given that America accounts for at least (and by some measurements, more than) half of the entire world's military expenditures, and for....6% of the world's population, I think?....America better be goddamn fucking awesome at war. In fact, that's still an insufficient way to describe it.
For that kind of money, the entire War on Terror could be declared an unbridled success tomorrow, and I'd still be a little disappointed.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Oh, they're cool. Absolutely. No doubts there. Are they $5 billion US cool? No, not really, I'd say.
There are other articles of technology that give a much better cool to dollar ratio: the Tupolev 160, the Tomcat, the Griffen, etc.
Then again, I'm not the Defense Minister of a fictional superpower, but if we were aiming to be cool, we could do a lot better for a lot less.
Isn't the Tomcat pretty much designed for Naval aviation, and useless without it?
I mean, aircraft carriers are pretty god damn important - without them you have no way to effectively project airpower.
The F-18 is itself eventually going to be replaced by the naval JSF variant.
No we're not. Our morals, combined with increased awareness of the ugliness of war, prevent us from projecting it effectively. We couldn't even get some 2-bit thug out of Mogadishu because we flinch at the sight of dead Marines being dragged through the streets. We're no longer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be good at war - not only in terms of humans lost, but in terms of humanity lost.
I think that's to our credit morally, but it also condemns us to waging the ineffective "They're our mortal enemy but let's not waterboard them or beat them up or blow up their house if there are innocent bystanders who'll get caught in the blast" type of campaigns we've been stuck in since WWII.
The US certainly had no problem carpet bombing north vietnam and cambodia. And waterboarding only stopped last year.
Which in turn leads to tactical doctrines which emphasizes a lack of military causalties - as military causalties make the public opinion back home want to end the war - causing civilian causalties that instead makes the political goals the war is set out to pursue unattainable. Killing innocent bystanders is a fucking bad idea in "assymetricalal warfare" where tomorrows combattants are yesterdays innocent bystanders, as they had to watch their wife, husband, brother or father die while doing something competely innocent. In an all out, we-need-to-preserve-our-fighting-strenght-or-there-will-be-no-tomorrow, ones ability and willingness to commit atrocities might matter. For the type of wars the west is involved in these days however... The reasons for the wars are not all-out survival, the political goals are long-term as are the problems they attempt to solve. At that point, withstanding atrocities is a hell of a lot more important than committing them.
I feel that if the government interfered in my life in such a way that I could not maintain what I consider to be an acceptable standard of living I would consider revolution. If my standard of living dropped to the point that it was no longer a standard of living by any reasonable definition, then it would be time to take up arms.
Many revolutions in the past were driven by a downtrodden mass rising up against the "oppressors" due to unacceptably low standards of living. I don't think this is likely to occur in the US now or at any time in the foreseeable future, because the US Government is very good at making sure the dole is available to the poor, thus both buying their votes and maintaining a minimum standard of living that is found acceptable.
We've got the worst fucking safety net in the developed world.
Accounting for half of the world's military expenditures isn't easy.
And once we get in a serious war, one where our nation's well being is truly on the line, like a war with China you'll find pretty quickly we're not going to care so much and the full weight of Americas incredibly powerful military is brought to bare.
You're right to say that our squeamishness towards war is a good thing, especially when we have so much capacity for destruction, but once full war breaks out its going out the window.
Alien invasion. Dealing with a likely technologically advanced foe that may or may not also possess overwhelming numbers and firepower, and quite possibly even a first strike advantage, depending on how they make their approach and what they want. Obviously for whatever reason they'd need to desire Earth remain relatively un-obliterated, otherwise the whole "hurl a couple of extinction level event astroids at us" makes it a very short and one sided fight, but under such circumstances it would be interesting (read: horrifying) to see what the nations of the world could do together, and what technologies might be deployed. You've just got to assume that DARPA has some big Applied Sciences Warhouse with a bunch of shit that's either deemed too expensive per unit, or too hard to mass produce to waste on a simple conflict like the ones we generally see.
I'm calling it now. Power Armour.
But this is drfiting away from the topic of armed insurrection. I have to agree with others that it's unlikely we'll see anything on that scale in the near future unless something truly extraordinary occurs. ... maybe Texas decides to actually break away, and maybe grab a couple of nearby states while they're at it, whether they want to come along or not? I simply cannot fathom a 'civilian' level insurrection occuring in this day and age within the US. Well, I can imagine it happening, but as pointed out above, I can also imagine it being quelled within the hour.
Yes, they are, by a ridiculous degree. The "Iraqis dead" numbers reported in the media are overwhelmingly the result of Iraqi on Iraqi violence, intentional or collateral. Plus if we really want to nitpick which casualties the US military is responsible for we'd not count everyone mercenaries kill.
Anyway, the point is if you compare this to WW2 where German and Japanese cities were turned in firestorms then I think you can see the difference. Hell no one even questioning terror bombing as being a step too far until Dresden and I don't think journalists ever cared about burning Japanese cities.
We've gone from purposefully targeting enemy civillians to attack morale to only killing civillians as collateral damage or by mistake.
That's actually not true. Societies with poor standards of living actually don't produce many revolutions. They often produce revolutionary movements - i.e. rebel/criminals in the jungle, breakaway provinces - but the majority of revolutions come from either rising or falling segments of society.
The French Revolution is a good example of revolt by a rising class. During the French Revolution, the revolution was bankrolled by merchants who had seen their fortunes rise because of the expansion of trade and the early Industrial Revolution. The noble classes kept ratcheting up taxes and creating laws that held down the growing number of wealthy "commoners", to the point that those commoners joined with the truly poor who also were cool with the idea of decapitating nobles.
The rise of Nazi Germany is an example of revolution by a class that feels downward mobility. The Nazi revolution - which it was, albeit with the final shots fired at the ballot box - happened because you had a prosperous Western middle and working class nation suddenly experiencing massive poverty, financial uncertainty, unemployment, foreign occupation by French forces and incompetent leadership. Comfortable people suddenly found themselves in a position where they felt they could lose everything they had and supported a party that claimed it could take back "what belonged to them."
The Russian Revolution has aspects of both of these, plus other contradictory factors. Again, though, you had successful professionals, artists and other "outcast" up-and-comers versus a decaying nobility.