Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

[SirNitram]

I doubt you have read them all. I order to be sucessful in taking out a military, one nees to match it in terms of arms and discipline. The whole point of forming a militia against the government is to defeat it if it is needed.

Iraq is not a shining success story for any sort of militia. They ae efeated, they ahve no chance of winning. I doubt being defeated as a matter of course is what the founding fathers had in mind when they said to rise up against tyranny.

So you're simply blind and ignorant to the entire concept of asymmetrical warfare. Typical. You spout off despite knowing nothing.

[Cynical Cat]

I doubt you have read them all. I order to be sucessful in taking out a military, one nees to match it in terms of arms and discipline. The whole point of forming a militia against the government is to defeat it if it is needed.

Actually, it doesn't. Guerrilla warfare is what is required in to defeat a tyrannical American military, not the ability to defeat it on open field battle. A government so tyrannical that it would provoke a wildscale revolt would be extremely vulnerable that form of warfare.

Iraq is not a shining success story for any sort of militia. They ae efeated, they ahve no chance of winning. I doubt being defeated as a matter of course is what the founding fathers had in mind when they said to rise up against tyranny.

The founding fathers got defeated often enough in battle to know it was the war they needed to win, not every single engagement. Thanks for declaring victory in Iraq, BTW. You will forgive the rest of us for not taking your word for it that it is in the bag. Can you give us a date for the end of major combat?

[Comrade Tortoise]

I doubt you have read them all. I order to be sucessful in taking out a military, one nees to match it in terms of arms and discipline. The whole point of forming a militia against the government is to defeat it if it is needed.

Iraq is not a shining success story for any sort of militia. They ae efeated, they ahve no chance of winning. I doubt being defeated as a matter of course is what the founding fathers had in mind when they said to rise up against tyranny.

So you're simply blind and ignorant to the entire concept of asymmetrical warfare. Typical. You spout off despite knowing nothing.

WIthout a massive pre-existing network of tunnels, and at least anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft weapons of some type, please tell me how a militia could have a hope of defeating a staqning army. Hell, in Ira they are using older tanks, landmines, RPGs... and they are still getting their asses handed to them, with no hope of victory in the long term

[Cynical Cat]

Ben, the US has problems getting enough troops to control all of Iraq. They lost controls of some cities for a while. Now how many times larger is the US than Iraq? How many times more potential insurgents? How many more trained engineers to go to work making bombs? How many simpathizers are there going to be in the military if the US government gets so bad there is an uprising? Is every soldier going to be in a tank every hour of every day? No. You don't need tunnels for an guerrilla war. You need to pick your target and fade away before you get stepped on.

[SirNitram]

WIthout a massive pre-existing network of tunnels, and at least anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft weapons of some type, please tell me how a militia could have a hope of defeating a staqning army. Hell, in Ira they are using older tanks, landmines, RPGs... and they are still getting their asses handed to them, with no hope of victory in the long term

Easy. The same way every revolution has: Causing portions of the military to defect to them. Destruction of infrastructure. Destruction of supply lines.

A populace in revolt isn't churning out bullets, recruits, shells, and bombs. A populace in revolt isn't delivering supplies. A populace in revolt can even sway alot of soldiers.

If you'd read history, you'd understand this simple matter. Then again, if you read history, you'd not be libertarian.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Hmm... seems I can lock a shadowtopic...

I just caught Nitrams massive flame post. So, I will be splitting that to down below if I can. Seeing as it is a very nasty and blatant AUP violation, administration will figure out what to do about that

[SirNitram]

Hmm... seems I can lock a shadowtopic...

I just caught Nitrams massive flame post. So, I will be splitting that to down below if I can. Seeing as it is a very nasty and blatant AUP violation, administration will figure out what to do about that

Heh. You called the first direct insult, little one. If you can't take the response, don't initiate. You are the one who went on and on about how we humans can't help but hit back once we get hit, after all. Showing your hypocrisy all the brighter!

And just to mock you: You don't need to lock shadow topics. You split, lock, then move. Duuuuuuuuh. Oldest trick in the modbook.

[Stofsk]

WIthout a massive pre-existing network of tunnels, and at least anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft weapons of some type, please tell me how a militia could have a hope of defeating a staqning army. Hell, in Ira they are using older tanks, landmines, RPGs... and they are still getting their asses handed to them, with no hope of victory in the long term

Easy. The same way every revolution has: Causing portions of the military to defect to them. Destruction of infrastructure. Destruction of supply lines.

Exactly. Mao Tse-dung equated a revolutionary war with a three stage system wherein the first stage was outright terrorism, the second stage was the gurilla operation, and the third and final stage is open war (presumably at this point, if the revolutaries have met with success in their struggles, they can afford heavy metal like artillery pieces).

A populace in revolt isn't churning out bullets, recruits, shells, and bombs. A populace in revolt isn't delivering supplies. A populace in revolt can even sway alot of soldiers.

Exactly. Assymetrical warfare; gurillas have to make-do with what they can improvise, swipe or buy. I don't care if 'back-in-the-day' the Founding Fathers thought x, y, z were needed for a well-armed militia to act as a counter-weight on the government's armed forces. 'Back-in-the-day' it was perfectly reasonable to stand in line and march against rifles.

[SirNitram]

WIthout a massive pre-existing network of tunnels, and at least anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft weapons of some type, please tell me how a militia could have a hope of defeating a staqning army. Hell, in Ira they are using older tanks, landmines, RPGs... and they are still getting their asses handed to them, with no hope of victory in the long term

Easy. The same way every revolution has: Causing portions of the military to defect to them. Destruction of infrastructure. Destruction of supply lines.

Exactly. Mao Tse-dung equated a revolutionary war with a three stage system wherein the first stage was outright terrorism, the second stage was the gurilla operation, and the third and final stage is open war (presumably at this point, if the revolutaries have met with success in their struggles, they can afford heavy metal like artillery pieces).

A populace in revolt isn't churning out bullets, recruits, shells, and bombs. A populace in revolt isn't delivering supplies. A populace in revolt can even sway alot of soldiers.

Exactly. Assymetrical warfare; gurillas have to make-do with what they can improvise, swipe or buy. I don't care if 'back-in-the-day' the Founding Fathers thought x, y, z were needed for a well-armed militia to act as a counter-weight on the government's armed forces. 'Back-in-the-day' it was perfectly reasonable to stand in line and march against rifles.

To emphasize, the Founding Father's knew the three stage system. They had walked it.

Terrorism: The 'Boston Massacre' is the best example. It was an act of a violent mob against the legitimate authority. While it was militarily a failure, as the mob was stopped, it served the necessary place Step One serves in the Three Steps: It garnered support for...

Guerilla Fighting: The early stages of the war, especially with snipers using their rifled guns to hit officers from long range. As they used this, they mustered a force of officers and veterans from the British forces used in earlier wars to fight...

Open War: The late stages, where proper units engaged in more conventional tactics to play merry hell with Cornwallis et al.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Hmm... seems I can lock a shadowtopic...

I just caught Nitrams massive flame post. So, I will be splitting that to down below if I can. Seeing as it is a very nasty and blatant AUP violation, administration will figure out what to do about that

Heh. You called the first direct insult, little one. If you can't take the response, don't initiate. You are the one who went on and on about how we humans can't help but hit back once we get hit, after all. Showing your hypocrisy all the brighter!

And just to mock you: You don't need to lock shadow topics. You split, lock, then move. Duuuuuuuuh. Oldest trick in the modbook.

Actually, you called me a irtbag first IIRC. But I let that go.

[B4UTRUST]

Shit, you're simply insane if you think you need heavy artillery to fight an army. Have you looked at Iraq lately?

Ummm...which side are you arguing for there Nitram? We can take a look at the breakdown of what was used in this last war in Iraq if you like...

Iraqi Military:
Scud Cs, T-72s, AK-47s, Strela-3 SAMs, Strela-2M SAMS, Strela-1 SAMS, Roland SAMS, Anti-tank missles, FAW 200 Cruise missles, Scud-B ballistic missiles, Al-Hussein Ballistic missiles, Al-somoud ballistic missiles, T-62s, T-55s, PT-76 amphibious light tanks, BMP armored vehicles, AML-60s, EE-9s, ERC 90s, Panhard M3s, BRDM 1& 2s, ZSU-23-4 AA guns, Mirage F1 fighters, Mig-29s, SU-25s, Mig-21s, Hinds, Zhuk patrol ships

Not to mention biological agents to include:
Anthrax, Botulinum, CS, Cyclosarin, Gangrene, Ricin, Rotavirus, Sarin, Sulfur Mustards, Tabun, Trichothecenes, Vx, Wheat smut

Coalition Military:
JDAM air to surface precision bombs, JSOW ATS precision bombs, GBU laser-guided bombs, GBU-28/37 "bunker busters", "Daisy cutter" 15,000lb bombs, Mk82 500lb bombs, Mk84 2000lb bombs, Thermobaric weapons, Tomahawk/AGM-86 cruise missiles, Have Nap missiles, Maverick air to surface missiles, HARM anti-radar missiles, AIM-120 ATA missiles, Hellfire ATS missiles, TOW anti-armor missiles, Stinger AA missiles, MOAB, M1A1 Abrams, M2A3 Bradley, M6 Bradley Linebacker, Humvees, M109A6 Paladin Howizter, M270 Multiple launch rocket system, Patriot missile systems, Avenger Humvees, Light Armored Vehicles, Challenger II Battle Tank, Warrior Combat Vehicle, Saxon APC, Striker Anti-Armor vehicle, SA-80 rifle, AS-90 Braveheart Howitzer, Harrier GR7s, A-10 Warhogs, Tornado GR1s & 4s, Jaguar GR1s, Nimrods, Tornados, Puma Helicopter, VC10 C1k, B-1B, B2, B-52, F/A-18, F-15, F-16, F-14, F-117, AV-8B, F/A-18 E/F, AC-130 H&U, MH-60K/L, The USS Abraham Lincoln, Constellation, Kitty Hawk, Harry S. Truman, Theodore Roosevet,

Sources:
U.S. Defense Dept, British Ministry of Defense, Periscope, Jane's Information Group, Austrailian Defense Ministry

Now, correct me if I'm wrong here but few items listed above could, and I know this is probably a pretty far stretch here, concievably be considered heavy artillery. Like...the SAMs, scuds, JDAMS, AA guns, tanks, stingers, etc etc etc

Now if you're refering to Iraqi military power since we rolled over them and took away most of their toys(still some we haven't found so don't be surprised there the desert is a big place), they're still managing to attack troops with everything from mines to RPGs, AK-47s, sniper rifles, mortar attacks and some other nice little things that keep flying over our heads as we sit there trying to fix a fucking airplane.

And since RPGs can take out tanks, I'd classify that as a piece approaching something akin to heavy artillery. And note the tanks that were taken out with RPGs included those with the new vaunted Chobham armor system. The same one that's designed to take close range HEAT rounds and KE penetrator rounds multiple times from point blank. And it was blown up with an RPG. *shakes head*

[frigidmagi]

He agruing the current situation in which the enemy is not using airpower or heavy armor B4.

[B4UTRUST]

So the rpgs, landmines and ak-47s then.

But that's minor insurgencies, not the iraqi military as a whole. Which unsurprisingly we're having a hand in training now I believe.

[frigidmagi]

He's talking about fighting an army, not being one B4. In this I think we both admit that the enemy in Iraq has managed to survive engagments with US forces without the benifit of heavy Artillary.

[SirNitram]

He's talking about fighting an army, not being one B4. In this I think we both admit that the enemy in Iraq has managed to survive engagments with US forces without the benifit of heavy Artillary.

ANd even still, I'm not talking about beating the army; as Stofsk pointed out, the terrorism is just the first stage of a revolt.

[B4UTRUST]

Yes, that method of warfare seems to be quite effective. We did it to the english, the iraqis are doing it to us. Thus history repeats itself...

[Josh]

Except that instead of building a support base, they're pissing off the very people they need support from.

[SirNitram]

Right. The Insurgency isn't winning because they can't gain support, are facing outsiders(The Jihadists), and are fighting an army from abroad. Against the Iraqi army, they'd be better off, as they sap it's strength outside the battlefield.

In these lessons we see that you don't need to turn 'The right to bear arms..' into a no-limits fallacy to work. QED.

[B4UTRUST]

But with Iraqi I'm not sure they had any sort of provisional constitution, bill of rights or anything resembling what we would have as a binding law governing our rights and freedoms. So I don't think that comparing our laws to a county and political system that offers very little in the way of freedoms is a real way to display this. They don't turn the right to bare arms into a no-limits fallacy because they have no right to bare arms to begin with. So I'm not sure how using them as an example really applies to the situation as a whole.

But the point as a whole is made, I'm just not sure if the reference is entirely appropriate. I'd say you need to have a country that has such a right to bare arms before you can turn it to a no limit fallacy to begin with. Can't abuse a freedom you don't have and all.

[SirNitram]

But with Iraqi I'm not sure they had any sort of provisional constitution, bill of rights or anything resembling what we would have as a binding law governing our rights and freedoms.

This has zero impact on whether the stages of revolt will be emulated if it's successful, or if asymmetrical war works, which is all the analogy was for.

[Josh]

Okay, I'm a well-known gun nut. Issues relating to firearms policy, politics, control and regulation thereof are easily my primary political barometer, and the reason I am so against the gun prohibition lobby in America is the fundamental dishonesty with regards to the way they go about their business. Examples include a so-called 'Assault Weapons Ban', and prior to what a lot of you young'uns remember, we had the much-feared 'Saturday Night Specials', as well is interludes of 'OMG PLASTIC PISTOLS!', 'Cop-killer bullets', and currently we appear to have an 'OMG UBER-SNIPER RIFLES OF DOOM!!!!!1111!!!' phantom issue. (For a real blast from the past, I have an old book laying around somewhere in my voluminous library where Ted Kennedy is ranting about how 'snubbies', i.e., short-barreled revolvers, have no legitimate place in the hands of civilians, an issue that aroused some debate in the seventies and early eighties.)

That said, while in my radical youth I would have espoused something akin to a no-limits interpetation of the 2nd Amendment, my view has changed with time.

No right is absolute. Right to life? Societies violate that one all the time. If you argue for the availability of means of self defense, you are arguing that the right to life can be removed in certain circumstances.

So where does that leave us? The 2nd Amendment had several purposes in mind it its construction. One intent was the ability to supplement our armed forces with civilian militias, to engage enemies both foreign and domestic. This was not the National Guard, this was the explicitly defined unorganized militia of the Federalist papers, and the concept was something akin to antibodies in the immune system- invaders would be swarmed by citizen-soldiers.

Indeed, this was the only military organization that Jefferson really wanted. He also had that spiffy idea about gunboats that would somehow overwhelm the Royal Navy, perhaps by inducing incapacitating peals of convulsive laughter in the crews.

Now, the next primary purpose of the 2nd Amendment was, yes, the ability for the citizens to rise against a government which had exceeded its bounds. Many several of the founders regarded this as almost an inevitability, and thereby made clear that the armed citizen would be the final check on government power when all legal means had failed.

And to that end, while regulations may become necessary to clarify and narrow the liberties entrenched in the Constitution and its Amendments, they should always be viewed with a critical eye. Is the matter at hand a true clear and present danger to society at large, as say possession of personal nuclear devices would be?

Or is this the agenda of organizations such as Handgun Control, Inc. (whatever they're calling themselves today), who make their living on lobbying the issue, draw their funding, prominence and power from this lobbying?

This falls under the custodianship of our liberties that we have been charged with, eternal vigilance and so on.

Now, onto the specific analogy of owning tanks and so on- honestly, they're useless for revolutionary purposes. A broad-based insurrection in the United States would succeed on the basis of numbers and on the basis of the fact that our military would sunder over the issue. But presenting the remaining military with clean targets like tanks would simply result in a lot of dead revolutionaries.

For now, the plain old rifles, pistols, and shotguns will do the job nicely, if it were to come to that.

[Rogue 9]

In here we find an argument based not from logic but from feeling; that the right to posessions is inherent from the named rights. An astute person will immediately realize that this doesn't follow; one doesn't need a TV to pursue happiness(They've been pursuing happiness since they had rocks), to live, or to be free.

While a right to property is a nice idea, it should be remembered that no where is it guaranteed and ennumerated. It's existance is entirely conceptual, and that concept is free to be challenged.

The right to property is one of the three central rights. Jefferson named the pursuit of happiness instead of property simply to avoid completely plagiarizing John Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government. The "liberty and property" wording was returned to in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France. Further, the right to property is mentioned multiple times in the Federalist Papers, notably Federalist No. 10.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

So you see, by no means is the right to property simply pulled out of Ben's ass.

[SirNitram]

So you see, by no means is the right to property simply pulled out of Ben's ass.

Which would be a positively stunning rebuttal if, indeed, at any point in the quoted, I said it was.

But I didn't.

It is not enumerated in any document which applies to the country he is talking about. That France may do it.. Well, my opinions on France are well known and do not bear repeating.

So. Phrase of the day: Red Herring.

[Rogue 9]

So you see, by no means is the right to property simply pulled out of Ben's ass.

Which would be a positively stunning rebuttal if, indeed, at any point in the quoted, I said it was.

But I didn't.

It is not enumerated in any document which applies to the country he is talking about. That France may do it.. Well, my opinions on France are well known and do not bear repeating.

So. Phrase of the day: Red Herring.

Again: The Federalist Papers make reference to that right. As they are documents originating in the United States and are concerned with its government, referring to them is not a red herring.

[SirNitram]

Again: The Federalist Papers make reference to that right. As they are documents originating in the United States and are concerned with its government, referring to them is not a red herring.

The context and exact quotes would be lovely. You're making an assertion; isn't it usually customary to back those up?

Even still, there's limited protections of a right to property, I'll concede. The freedom from undue seizure is a clearly deliniated and ennumerated right, as opposed to documents which talk about the United States and it's government. The same could be said of a textbook today: It's made in the united states and talk about it's government. Unlike the textbook or the Federalist Papers, the Constitution and Declaration are the law of the land. Perhaps it'd be sensible to discuss them then.