Lethal force against the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters would be justified

"Our agreement as citizens to obey the law to maintain our social order is sometimes described as an essential part of the social contract. This means that, in return for the benefits of social order, we agree to live according to certain laws and rules." -- American Bar Association [1] Suppose thousands of Native Americans and their sympathizers stormed your apartment building and declared the building their own, to do with as they please, because of an ideology that claims the land belongs to them. What should the response be? It is an act of war, and this closely resembles the current actions of the protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The DAPL protesters are persistently breaking laws with their persisting illegal encampments [2], illegal roadblocks [3], threats of violent attacks [4] and actual violent attacks on innocents using IEDs [5]. Like all other national residents, they are not above the law, but they are illegally trespassing and violently agitating with the intent of blocking a legal construction project [6]. Given that the law rules, how can this persisting illegal activity be thwarted? Arrests are not enough, as hundreds of arrests have not prevents illegal agitators continuing to pour in. Crowd control methods, such as water cannons and rubber bullets, are unlikely to prevent the persistent violent harassment of construction workers by thousands of zealots. If the law rules, then the best option is to declare war against the invaders, arrest them all as prisoners of war, and resistance of any sort must be met with strong-to-lethal force. If the causes of the protesters were good causes, then the proposed solution would be an overreaction. Sometimes, laws are broken for the sake of a greater good. But, the two primary explicit causes of the protesters, being (#1) to protect drinking water from pollution and (#2) to protect claimed "sacred burial sites" from desecration, are both weak and seemingly ad hoc. Claim #1 is struck down by the rarity of pipeline ruptures. There are currently 2.4 million miles of energy pipelines in the USA [7], and only about 440 pipeline ruptures in the latest 17-year period have been catalogued by Wikipedia [8]. That means, over a 17-year period, there is one rupture for every 5454 miles of pipeline. That's about the arc length from the southern tip of Florida to the westernmost island of Alaska. A much greater threat to clean drinking water seems to be the defecation from thousands of protesters who lack outhouses [9]. Claim #2 also fails, as it failed to convince seven archaeologists of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, who conducted a survey of the land in question and failed to find "evidence of human remains or significant sites" [10]. The most plausible primary motivation of the protesters is mere contempt for both the energy industry and the white colonist rule of law [11]. The proposed solution has an American precedent: the Whiskey Rebellion. An overwhelming armed federal force led by President Washington quashed an illegal violent rebellion against a tax. No lives were lost in quashing the rebellion only because the rebels quickly surrendered in response to that strong hand. Had they fought back, they would have been slain, and justly so. Let history repeat itself. [1] American Bar Association Division for Public Education, 2016, "What is the rule of law?" [2] https://www.scribd.com... [3] http://www.cnn.com... [4] http://www.kfyrtv.com... [5] http://www.valleynewslive.com... [6] http://www.reuters.com... [7] http://www.pipeline101.com... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org... [9] http://www.washingtontimes.com... [10] https://www.scribd.com... [11] http://tinyurl.com...