Iraq: The Real Lesson for Americans

[Kaj]

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There's one important point most everyone has missed regarding Iraq...

Even with 21st century technology, the US military can't subdue a population that refuses to be subdued.

And the lesson?

There's always hope for revolution if we as a people would rise up. Tyranny can only prevail if we accept it. I'm going to Google how to build my own IEDs now... just in case.

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The Pentagon had a plan in place for invading Iraq long before Bush got his wish. 300k+ troops would be required.
Bush disregarded the plan and Powell's advice and went with Rumsfeld's decision, who had the generals under his thumb.
Powell was Sec of State at the time.

Things would be so much different if we had sent in 300k from the get go. Even better if we never invaded.

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How many troops would you estimate would be required if 15 million US citizens rose up together? (Not that it is likely to happen, but *if* 5% of the population rose up, how would you stop them?) Imagine how much damage they could do. I live in a town of 15,000 with probably 10 police officers -- a group of 20 determined citizens could wipe out the police force in their homes before the morning paper came out. If this happened on widespread scale, there would be chaos. And if you think US is hampered in Iraq, how much more are they hampered here? Are they going to start dropping clusterbombs into New York? And we've already seen in Iraq how difficult it is to root out an enemy in urban terrain who can destroy patrols with simple homemade bombs. I'm not saying we should do this, but if we really believed we must rise and take down the US govt, I'm saying it is possible -- and even easy. The only problem: Whatever follows it will probably be worse. But oh the fun we'd have.