> Engels, speaking of the struggles of 1848:
>
> '[T]he military have, on their side, the disposal of
> artillery and fully
> equipped corps of skilled engineers, resources of
> war which, in nearly
> every case, the insurgents entirely lack... [S]ince
> then there have been
> very many more changes, and all in favor of the
> military... The arming
> of this enormously increased number of troops has
> become incomparably
> more effective... On the other hand, all the
> conditions on the
> insurgents' side has grown worse' (Introduction to
> Marx's Class
> Struggles in France, International n.d., pp. 22 &
> 23-24).
>
> Obviously, the 'arming of this enormously increased
> number of troops,'
> since guided missiles, computerized radar, not to
> mention nukes, etc.,
> etc., is even MORE redoubtable. To suggest that
> communists, armed with
> only handguns, can face off against, say, star wars
> equipment is
> hopelessly naïve. Did rifles do the Black Panthers
> much good?
Spetsnaz:
Comrade I believe you demonstrate a real lack of
knowledge of military strategy. Those weapons are only
useful if they WORK.
Sure the capitalists have nuclear weapons, but nuclear
weapons are not effective as tactical weapons. In fact
the goal of war is to capture territory as much intact
as possible.
Sun Tzu in the Art of War even said,
"In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is
to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to
shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is
better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it,
to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company
entire
than to destroy them."
Pretty much nuclear weapons eliminate the possibility
entirely. If you want to capture a town for its
industrial base, if you use nuclear weapons you
destroy the very thing you wanted in the first place.
Nuclear Weapons are more for political intimidation
rather than actual tactical use. Even the atomic
attacks on Japan were indented to intimidate both
Japan into surrendering and to frighten the USSR.
Mao Zedong himself considered the atomic bomb a "paper
tiger" because it had no real practical use in
warfare.
Same goes with laser-guided missiles. They only work
under perfect enviromental conditions, meaning clear
weather. If the weather is terrible, the laser breaks
up and the bomb goes from "smart" to "dumb".
The Iraqis in many cases successfully disrupted US
bombing missions by setting fire to the oil fields,
since smoke could break up the laser as much as clouds
could.
As for handguns and rifles, they work under any
conditions. Only under real extreme conditions will
they not work. Even many US special forces personel
admit that "simpler is better", and much of the
high-tech equipment given to US soldiers are worthless
junk.
Like the planned land-warrior system designed to be in
service by 2010. Its supposed to give each individual
soldier a GPS satellite connection and also give the
ability to look around corners without putting
themselves in danger.
Problem, THE SYSTEM WEIGHS 50 LBS! Its extremely bulky
and adds extra weight to the large amount you already
have to carry into combat. Whereas a simple peasent
with an Ak-47 can just use the same street-smart
techniques he used all their life to get away from
gangs, police, etc to the same effect without all the
gadetry.
Also what reason does the individual soldier need GPS
for? You don't need high-tech satellites to know that
your enemy is firing at you from a nearby bulding.
Even with high-tech satellites, the US military still
needs to send in elite special forces to do
reconansise in the exact area.
Many military experts today say that the US military
leadership continues to be so arrogant about their own
abilities to fight unconventional warfare, which
insurgency is caterorized under. Technology alone will
not gain you the edge in insurgency warfare.
There are hundreds of examples of guerrilla forces
outmatching convential forces(government) with
superior weapons. Vietnam and Solomia are only the
most recent examples. There were cases of peasents
armed with simple bows they made from everyday items
being able to shoot down knights in heavy armor.
Now with the Black Panthers being defeated by force of
arms is nonesense. The Panthers were so entrenched
into the Black communities that is would've taken a
direct military assault to dislodge them, but that
would've been too costly on their side.
However, the FBI was able to infiltrate the movement
and slowly bring it down. The Panthers were not
defeated by force of arms like the Paris Commune was.
They were defeated because they fail to uphold one of
the greatest virtures of revolutionary work; secrecy.
This was the same with many Irish revolutionary
movements in the late 19th & early 20th centuries was
that British intelligence was able to easily
infiltrate these groups. It was untill Michael Collins
was able to provide the IRA good intelligence of its
own that he was able to break down British
intelligence.
The same can be said of the Bolsheviks. How the
Czarist secret police, the Okrhana, had agents inside
many revolutionary groups was why many revolutionaries
kept getting arrested.
>
> That said...
>
> 'Does that mean that in the future the street fight
> will play no further
> role? Certainly not. It only means that the
> conditions since 1848 have
> become more unfavorable for civil fights, far more
> favorable for the
> military. A future street fight can therefore only
> be victorious when
> this unfavorable situation is compensated by other
> factors. Accordingly,
> it will occur more seldom in the beginning of a
> great revolution than in
> its further progress, and will have to be undertaken
> with GREATER
> FORCES' (ibid., p. 24, emphasis added).
Spetsnaz:
Actually the US military is nowhere near close to
being able to fight urban warfare. In fact the US
military has a history of advoding fighting within
cities simply because Urban warfare is so costly.
As one Marine drill instructor described, "Urban
warfare is highly confusing. Casualty rates are high.
The defender has the clear advantage, he can use his
smaller numbers to tie us down and have us waste
precious manpower and time to try to clear them."
This is especcially true at what happened in
Stalingrad. Although at first the Germans outnumbered
the Soviet forces, but the isolated pockets of
resistance caused enormous casualties among the
Germans and tied them down long enough for Zhukov to
launch a counter-attack and surround the Germans.
This also true of the Soviet assault on Berlin. Just
imagine Hitler youth schoolboys and old-men armed with
Panzerfaust grenade launchers caused around 500,000
Soviet casualties in just two weeks of fighting.
> Ryan: What kind of force do you think we have to use
> against the
> government... I don't think spears and arrows are
> affective anymore and
> rocks just don't seem to keep them down. Guns are a
> necessary tool for a
> revolution, we will only be tossed to the side if we
> don't come out
> fighting.
>
> Well, as the Engels quote suggests, today, handguns
> ARE spears and
> arrows compared to what sort of goodies the Pentagon
> will unleash in a
> (strictly) military conflict. The sort of weapons
> communists will need,
> to back up a MASS movement, are not available on the
> 'free' market
> anyway; those will have to acquired extra-legally.
> If one guided
> missile, and that's the sort of weapon I'm talking
> about, can take out,
> say, 100,000 people in the street, then defending
> the proliferation of
> handguns---popguns!---when this proliferation has
> primarily led to
> exterminating the poor (who communists wish to
> entreat) by, alas, other
> poor people (who communists wish to entreat), offers
> little in return
> for the reactionary purposes it serves.
Spetsnaz:
Using guided missiles against urban insurgents is
different than trying to take out a tank or a
building. First off, you don't know who are the
isurgents are or where they are most of the time. Even
Andrew Krepinevich of the Ctr. for Strategic &
Budgetary Asseess. admitted that when dealing with
urban warfare, the stealth bomber would be completely
useless.
Plus random massive destruction of urban areas would
play right into our hands. Just like the massive
bombings of vietnam both helped turn US public opinion
against the war and made more of the population more
syspathetic to the Vietcong.
Even Gen. Bernard Trainor ret. who is the author of
"the General's War" even said, "In Urban warfare, you
have innocent people mixed up with alot of the bad
guys. This is very serious, because the mintue you
become indiscrimate in the use of force, than all
you're doing is playing into the enemies hands and
making more enemies because you're killing the
innocent."
A good resource on this is the Military Operations in
Urbanized Areas(MOUT) homepage
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6453/
This website has a lot of resources of the subject.
Spetsnaz
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