Busting the Militia Myth

how are you defining the difference between militia and army?

...

Militias with millions of men don't exist

Good Question. I would use American history for an example. Militia was raised from the general population, and elected their officers. The result is a force that is poorly equipped, poorly trained, and poorly led. The only thing the Militias did well in American history was massacre Indian villages.

If they're inferior then they should have lost, no?

How much trouble has the US had with a bunch of goatherding Islamists, purely because their revolutionary struggle is somewhat decentralised and their centre of power is god?

How much trouble has Turkey had with the PKK, despite the former being the second largest army in NATO and the latter being a bunch of poor guerillas in the mountains? 40 years of war

Research the Tet Offensive. The Viet Cong has a massive uprising and were beaten so badly that they ceased to be a military force. After Tet, the guerrilla fighting in south vietnam was done by N.V.A infilitrators.

Irregular troops performed well using Guerilla tactics in the southern colonies during the revolution

Sure they can fight endlessly in the boonies,,but can they take and hold strategic points and actually achieve victory.

Sorry to bust your romantic notions, but the War for American Revolution was won by the Continental Army with massive French support. Not by angry woodsmen with rifles taking potshots.

militia are really only suited for guerrilla warfare or as an auxiliary force supporting a main professional army.
after the allies liberated france, the FFI only existed as police or to lay siege to germans holed up in a handful of port cities

...

then the October Revolution was a militia. it didn't even have 80,000 red army combatants.

Endlessly harassing US troops with road side bombs isn't even producing enough fatalities to get front page media attention let alone force the Americans to leave.

Sure.. the occupation of Afghanistan has gone on longer than the Vietnam war, sure there is no end in sight.

But they aren't winning. Their only hope is that the war becomes a political liability like Vietnam…..and I don't see that happening.

The Viet Cong were still militias after the Tet offensive, even with NVA help.

What do you think we're advocating?

Thank you for that.

[waits for coalition airstrike in Kurdish]

The Red Army didn't exist in 1917

as in the Red Guards and other revolutionary militants

I didn't claim that irregulars won the war, only that they performed well in the southern theater.

The PAVN was technically an Army sure, but they sure as shit weren’t equipped like one.

What's the point of fighting a war if you don't win.?

*uses underground and tree cover, avoids contact unless conditions are favourable, uses only overwelhming local force, reatrests before air power can be brought to bear in Vietnamese*

Suffers ten deaths for every American wounded

...

that you Nazbol-kun?

American
Burger

Burgers

Americans

Stop being retarded user. Much of the Viet Cong were former Viet Minh who traveled into Southern Jungles during French occupation in anticipation of war. The NVA is exactly what you would think, a primarily ground force army which had experience with guerilla warfare, but at no point were they the primary fighting force in the South.

*retreats in American*

Gtfo cuck libbie and take your gun bannins with you

Some foreign governments would definitely support a revolution as a means of undermining American power even if they are against socialism/communism though probably only with supplies and advisors. Especially so if those leading the revolution pay some lip service to Russia, China, or whoever may help. Let's not also forget that while the US military is fairly right-wing there are a lot that aren't and I doubt most would be willing to attack a force supported or made up by friends and family. We don't have a distinct military class in this country like they do in countries like Turkey or Egypt.

Y'all are retarded. Even Japs on 4/pol/ have a better understanding of how this shit works. Read some Guevara please.

Okay, I rate that Japanon.

There's a good quote that I've heard but can not find on-line.
"An air-force can dominate, but only infantry can occupy."

Something like this was said by, if I recall correctly, a Finnish OSCE observer in Kosovo during the NATO bombing campaign in the 90's. Or perhaps he was some air-force major giving an interview to our press.. I really can't remember.

it wasn't trying. the only way to truly win a war is to exterminate population

So when do you predict a Taliban victory in Afghanistan?

But surely they can still threaten small areas at a time with them

Tbh at this rate someone that isn't the government is going to be rolling into Kabul soon.

*wins the war*

What's up with the influx of all these liberal gun grabbers?

Actually he was right. The VC were basically done after the Tet Offensive, and the PAVN picked up the slack. That doesn’t help his argument though, since the North Vietnamese Army used the exact same tactics as the VC. They didn’t fight a conventional war by any stretch of the imagination.

Militia and guerilla warfare aren't a war on the battlefield, they're strategic wars.

If you participate in a guerilla campaign, you are probably going to die. But you're going to die having forced your opponent to waste huge amounts of resources killing you.

Any kind of guerilla campaign in a revolt would fundamentally be about denying infrastructure to the opposition, not killing soldiers.

Considering the Taliban control 40% of the country still I give it a couple more decades when 🍔burger🍔s finally fuck off because they have no more money

I posted about this is a previous military thread. Basically, by now the developed countries have such ridiculously advanced weaponry and equipment that civilian resistance becomes not just nigh-suicidal like with the Vietnamese, but downright pointless.

Your country is in the middle of a big assfuck revolution, and Murka takes the opportunity to liberate an oppressed massive oil field of yours. Any army you try to send there to retake it is spotted from hundreds of miles away via satelitte imaging and vaporized by drones. What the fuck can you possibly do? Militarily, jack shit.

If you're fighting your own country's troops, things get less difficult, because soldiery support is vital for the revolution to triumph anyway and there's a political arena is addition to the military one. So if you don't have most of them on your side you aren't winning anyway, whether they're armed with muskets or battlemechs.

The problem with these wars is that they're not really wars so much as permanent low-level conflicts. Anarchy at its most vulgar and ugly, really. Look at Afghanistan and Somalia especially. They're been at war for ages, and there's absolutely no end in sight. Iraq and Libya seem to be on the same path. And things are bound to further go down that path, as chaotic 3rd world urban overgrowth will be the most likely battlefield of the 21st century.

It's a purposefully endless war to funnel money to the MIC.

That's retarded
They might purposefully start them for that reason but it is in everyone's interest to end it open up their markets and then start another conflict somewhere else

They had Bin Laden cornered mere months after 9/11
archive.is/iQNZY

That guy is reposting copypasta, and I doubt he's even Japanese.

..and this is relevant why? The point still stands.

...

you were ascribing his insight noteworthiness because he was a jap on 4chan, but actually he didn't develop his ideas there and he's probably not japanese.

What is a Holla Forums approved battlecry?

READ NIGGA!

youtu.be/dBz_U4J5jwM
We're coming bucko.

Hura!!!

if "bust a nut" isn't yelled during a bayonet charge, you're doing it wrong

Reminder that until 1934 in the US, private citizens were allowed to own cannons, rockets, machineguns, battleships, and anything else they could afford.

Reminder that until WWI, the US had basically no permanent military, with >95% of troops drawn from local militias outfitted and trained using private funds before mustering at joint assemblies to form federal forces.

Reminder that permanent standing militaries have always been an antidemocratic con, and in the 4G "warfare" environment of today are an even bigger con than ever.

Everybody in this thread's just naming militant groups skilled enough in guerrilla warfare to make imperialist powers with standing militaries rage quit instead of burning down rainforests or turning deserts into glass. Sure, the Taliban and Viet Cong can hold off The United States of The Soviet Union for years on end, but they can't create stable living conditions for the people they're supposed to be fighting for cuz militiamen and civilians alike are getting carpet bombed to Hell on a daily basis by countries with actual governments and militaries. What good does overthrowing the capitalist status quo and setting up socialist order do when you trade in wage slavery and exploitation for 24/7 artillery strikes and gunfire?

I don't wanna live in over a dozen US military bases in Syria, I wanna live in a world of full communism.

Vietnam drove the French, Americans and finally the Chinese out of their country. Afghanistan was free of occupation for a decade.

Really, even looking back at the American Revolution's links to France, the key factor seems to be that guerrillas need the clandestine support of a stable foreign power in order to succeed.

NVA was a real military with fighter planes and tanks. They're the ones that made the push to Saigon and caused so many casualties on US side. VC is shit and if that's all, Vietnam could have been occupied for decades like Iraq is now.

Their air and armored Power was negligible, and whenever it was used in a fight it was absolutely rekt by the Americans. Most of the time they used the same tactics as the VC, small platoon level hit and run attacks, booby traps, etc. Also they were only able to take Saigon after the Americans had pulled out of the country, since the ARVN was a whole other level of inept.

Please note that it was NVA tanks that drove into Saigon in 1975,,, not V.C.

Yeah, after the Americans had left the country. Read Violent Politics by William Polk, geurilla movements always fail most spectacularly when they adopt conventional tactics. That’s why the NVA didn’t do so until there was no real American presence in the country and they were only fighting the legendary incompetence of ARVN.

VC had no greater success. All they did was get killed without much effect on American troops. NVA meanwhile was able to score victories, body counts, and win the propaganda war in the US. VC was not even a competent insurgency. Wars may be started by militias, but they are finished by regulars.

There are holdouts like the Indian Maoists and the FARC. They are composed of former military who were spooked by ideology.

Say it with me.

Boer commandos.

Militias can beat regular armies IF society is militarized to the point where every citizen is a soldier. Because, the militia would essentially BE a regular army.

Also, militias actually stood up well to professional armies during the time of muskets, and you can consider the French Revolutionary Army to be a glorified drafted militia-army. Hell, most 19th century armies moved from being small professional armies to massive conscripted and drafted armies, inspired by Napoleon's achievements with the drafted French Revolutionary Army. Ironically, Napoleon the III, who relied on a small, professional army, was beaten by the Prussians, who adopted many of his predecessor's tricks against him. And, those armies probably were less trained than American militiamen and were less effective for modern warfare. I wouldn't consider WW1/WW2 armies to be professional either, being more drafted. Militias AND professional armies were on the decline during the time of muskets till the 2nd World War.

American militias had a more mixed record, excelling at small engagements and failing miserably at set-piece battles. I would say that it was the more voluntary nature of the militias and the less militarized nature of American society that made them perform poorer. Other societies, that had a much longer military tradition, produced better militias. The aforementioned commandos, Zaporozhian Cossacks, and the Swiss, who STILL have a militia society of a sort to this day, make for better examples of the militia.

And, no, guerilla insurgencies are NOT proper militias in the context we're talking about. A militia, in the context of something like the Minutemen, has to be a well-established institution that encompasses the entire citizenry. (And yes, most American "militias" aren't militias in that sense either, they're more like private armies. I'd say that only the Michigan Militia has really established itself as a militia of the public with democratic oversight on the leadership.)

The red guard of the petrograd soviet did