Protect Us From Tyranny? Wolverines!!!

Something that fascinates me is the mercurial perception of our military strength and forces depending on the conversation.

In general years, the Right talks about the American War Machine as if it's this vast, unstoppable juggernaut, except one that is underequipped and weak so we need to bolster it even more, but UNSTOPPABLE!!!!

And the Left rightfully laughs at this bullshit.

But when there is a mass shooting and the inevitable gun violence/control arguments start, the #Gundamentalists and #Ammosexuals start talking about how 2A is there to protect us from #GovernmentTyranny (it isn't) and that's why we'll only take their guns over their cold, dead bodies.

And suddenly the Left touts the American War Machine as this vast, unstoppable juggernaut with drones and satellites and low orbital death rays and shit.

And the Right is all like #Wolverines!!

It's another example of how Americans of all stripes are willing to use the military as propaganda while decrying the same actions by the other side.

And both sides are right *and* wrong.

The American War Machine is indisputably vast powerful. As it should be since we spend stupidly ridiculous amounts of money on it. Far more than is necessary (but apparently never enough).

At the same time, 50 god damn years of American warfare has shown us that underequipped, outnumbered, technologically inferior, insurgent style opponents can not only withstand our attempts to steamroll them, but can put up one hell of a fight.

We totally rolled over the enemy in Desert Shield/Desert Storm. In a stand up, WWII style fight, there's only a very few nations on the planet that could go toe-to-toe with us.

But notice that in Operation Enduring Freedom (now Operation Freedom's Sentinel), we might be steamrolling over the enemy, but we're doing it at a snail's pace. I mean, we're now at 16 years, 5 months, and 3 weeks of CRUSHING OUR ENEMIES AND SEEING THEM DRIVEN BEFORE US!!!!

This war is almost as long as the entire Vietnam War. We've been fighting in this war longer than we fought (as in full troop commitment) in the Vietnam War.

Do we somehow think that a war on American soil, between American civilians and American military forces will be a stand up, toe-to-toe war? That's not how it would shake out. And people neglect to mention that should such a conflict break out, suddenly, a lot of those military personnel and a lot of that military might is going to find itself on the side of the civilians. It would be civil war, and that's what happens. Not to mention the side-taking of thousands of armed and kinda trained LEO.

The American War Machine just isn't very good at insurgent warfare. Period. We've *never* gone #TotalWar on someone and we sure as fuck wouldn't do it here, unless Greg Stillson was our POTUS.

Could the #Gundamentalist and #Ammosexuals *win* such a conflict? At the end of the day, probably not. But insurgent wars aren't really about achieving a straight up win condition. They're largely about making the conflict so costly, so troublesome, and so unpopular that the aggressive force has to end it. Could they achieve that?

I wouldn't rule it out.

So let's stop trying to use that as a talking point/counter-argument against the #GunNuts, m'kay?

P.S. Remember, COTUS doesn't actually mention "guns" or "firearms".

#EndTheViolence

#SmashTheNRA

#SmashTheReds
#FuckTheGOP

#FuckTrump

#FuckStormtrumpers