Here's the thing. The locally, democratically elected govt. may be the legitimate govt., but most legitimately elected democratic govts. do not obey the rule of law anymore, ie;, most large cities, state govts. and of course our dear own FedGov. FedGov does virtually anything it wants, and the states and larger cities play right along, the Constitution and BOR be damned. They have a set of rules for US to obey, but when it comes to them following the law, or being subject to it, not so much. If you recall, Vandeboegh said that our enemies promise to negate any possibility of our using the standard methods of politics against them. I don't believe your four conditions of a successful insurgency are written in stone, either. They undoubtedly come into play, but the timing of their pre-eminence is more determined by chance, rather than design.And over at WesternRifleShooters this is the latter half of his comment.
The point being that any conflict can be dissected for its outcome, based on observation, but CHANCE determines what really happens, not formulas, not number crunching, not previous conflicts, not odds, and most assuredly not pronouncements of legitimacy. I would hazard that something else comes very much into play, but I don’t want the people here who don’t subscribe to that venue to start flaming about something that’s never been finally decided. But to give a formula for the successful outcome of an insurgency is forgetting that no battle plan survives the first five minutes of the actual battleI think that I need to address "Chance" or "Fate" or "Random Factors" when discussing the outcome of military action.
Yes it is true that the fickle hand of fate gets a vote in every operation. You can't eliminate all risk. But what you can do is minimize risk When talking about setting conditions for success we are really talking about optimizing our odds. The flip side of risk is reward. Don't do a COL Hannibal A-Team risky move to achieve something miniscule, nor would you want to bet it all on a Hail Mary when you could plan ahead and move the ball in much safer moves.
Would you conduct a deliberate attack without a support by fire position? Only if you had no other options right? Such as seizing a beach head or driving an armored task force hard through enemy defenses to get to the position you really need to occupy to block the enemy counter attack. There are very very few "hard and fast" rules when it comes to tactical deployment of forces.
But there are plenty of lessons from history by those who save lives and conserve combat power by minimizing risk. You do this first by studying your own capabilities, the enemy capabilities, and the terrain on which the conflict will take place. Then you TRAIN your forces to minimize your own weaknesses and maximize your own strengths. Then you ruthlessly plan to use every advantage at your disposal to achieve your tactical and strategic goals.
You do every damn thing in your power to minimize the fickle hand of fate. Those that say "no plan survives first contact with the enemy" as an excuse not to plan are idiotic simpletons at best, or malicious fools at worst. I believe Sean is only trying to remind people that there are no guarantees in warfare. Dwight Eisenhower even opined that "Plans are worthless, but planning is priceless." to describe the effect of planning and rehearsing prior to operations.
Never let anyone tell you that planning is worthless, that setting conditions is futile. On the flip side know when the 80% solution is achieved and you can push forward and trust your fellow warriors to figure out the remaining 20% as they go along. When I was an NCO all I wanted was an Officer to tell me "Achieve this effect at this place by this time" and let me loose. Now that I am an Officer I want to be able to give those hard charging NCOs indirect fire support, close air support, enemy comms jamming support, pre-planned combat resupply, dedicated medevac assets, easily understood sectors of fire with adjacent units to prevent fractricide, up to date and even live intel feeds to eliminate the fog of war. And all that stuff requires planning, coordination, and deconfliction.
Because if you don't plan, then you are planning to fail. You should go read John Mosby to learn how to train yourself to be fit to fight, and you should study history to train your mind how to think about minimizing risk to stay in the fight. Insurgencies are won by who stays in the fight the longest, and yes, fate has a role to play even in that. But don't be stupid about it.
3 comments:
Well stated, Sir. Planning for all eventualities is essential to success.
Yes, no plan survives contact with the enemy. However, proper planning enables a good leader to accomplish the mission in a changing environment.
Regarding the “how and why of any revolution (if you want to call it that for the sake of vrevity) will start is an interesting topic to study. I agree with your assessment of the structure of the revolution (your four conditions but what wikk the MOTIVE be to cause this?
There is an interesting book called the War of the Flea by Robert Taber about revolutionary guerrilla warfare. It was published a while ago in the 1960s and the CIA bought up the entire first printing – not because it was so dangerous that the Public couldn’t be allowed access to it but it was so good it was issued as a standard text to their operatives. I often used to see it in second hand bookshops in the UK (I'm now living in New Zealand).
One of the questions Taber asked was “Why do people, when the risks and dangers are so great, both to themselves and their families, resort to armed revolution?”
His answer was quite simple – they cannot get any redress to their grievances either through the ballot box or through the Courts.
In the UK law and order, taxation, the deliberate encouragement of immigration to destroy the nature of the country, loss of liberties, ID cards, etc. etc. are occurring at an accelerating rate and the average citizen is bewildered by this. The torrent of legislation and the pettiness and disproportionate penalties for trivial transgressions of the law is proceeding unabated. The labour government, through “Enabling Acts” (i.e. under existing legislation a Minister can introduce a law without it being scrutinised or voted on by parliament) introduced one new criminal offence for EVERY DAY they achieved power in May 1997 until the Conservatives won the last election (note that the rate of new legislation hasn't appreciably diminished). Such legislation has given the state unprecedented power to snoop and spy on the population and now it is more expensive to obey the law than to be a criminal.
The citizens do not understand the rules of the game being played by the politicians. They try to understand and reason their way to a solution – and while they are trying to address and counter the arguments and problems in detail and try to lobby their “representatives”, they are overwhelmed by the new legislation coming down the pipeline. The representatives will ignore or trivialise the citizens letter or enquiry – they are driving the process – and will divide and conquer using Critical Theory, accusations of Racism, Homophobia, Islamophobia etc.
Is there any redress through the ballot box? All political parties are singing from the same hymn sheet and the State an Europe is gaining greater and greater (unelected and unaccountable) powers.
Is there any chance of the Law Courts siding with the people of the country and reversing the Governments policies? Again, no. Rather they uphold stupid and malicious legislation. And any situation where it costs you more to obey the law than to disregard it is a dangerous situation. Some of the judgements from the UK courts are frankly bizarre and perverse to say the least and discriminate in favour of “minorities” and against the law abiding.
The mood of the people when I left in late January 2009 was becoming increasingly frustrated and angry. Society is so fragmented now that there is no longer a sense of national identity and people now have nothing to lose.
From reading all I can about the situation in America, it seems like the description above can be applied the the USA too … so if you accept that Taber was correct (regarding ballot boxes and the law courts) then you must conclude that Revolution in both the UK amd America is inevitable.
Bad times ahead …
Phil B
Ya'll don't get it THERE IS NO LAW. Government "do as it please", we are treated as, and in fact are SLAVES. Just try and say "no" I dare ya'. Don't think so, try it, some 'a AMs buddies will be at your house 'for you can say "Well Shit" Ever herd a Waco? Ruby Ridge? The Philidelphia MOVE house?The "government" took your "rights" long ago. Its just that NOW "they" don't give a flamein' RATS ASS what ya'll think about it.
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