From: andy@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Subject: Re: Jews and other things
Date: 16 Oct 92 17:41:19 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

>>Not at all.  It's just pointing out that soft targets are preferred.
>>Available targets have the same disadvantage.  Attacker's preferences
>>aren't "fault", but they do exist and there are consequences.
>>
>The Germans had an Air Force and tanks, the Jews didn't.

So?  Resistors don't always succeed, but they can win without
their oppressor's permission.  The big war toys didn't help
much in the Ghetto; the Jews had to be taken out by infantry.

>>Really?  It wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the Warsaw Ghetto,
>>which held out longer than the Polish Army, didn't make any real
>>difference, but to claim that dozens wouldn't have made a difference
>>is absurd.
>
>I agree, armed resistance can slow the invader down but it wasnt the French
>Resistance that defeated the Nazis, it was the allies.

The French Resistance didn't resist.

I'm not saying that EVERY revolution succeeds.  Some do lose.  Still,
since 1945, the govt boys with the big war toys have LOST more than
they've won.  They've lost because the big war toys aren't necessarily
decisive.  (Revolutionaries who try to use infantry in tank territory
lose, but so do regular army types.)

>The Jews were a minority among generally hostile populations in Europe,
>there was no possibility of a successful "Jewish revolution" It would
>have been crushed sooner or later.

And what was the benefit of giving up?  How many Jews WEREN'T killed
because most went quietly?  Or, is it that the Warsaw Ghetto
resistance provoked the Germans into slaughtering 6 million?

Yes, a small minority can't win.  The interesting question is whether
or not a large minority can make killing them off too expensive, even
if the majority has big war toys.

>came down to firepower between an army that backs the state and a population
>backed with handguns, the State will win every time.

And yet, the State hasn't won every time; it has LOST over half the
time.  Maybe the state is relying on the wrong military experts, or
maybe the people who thinks that armies always win don't understand
the limitations of the big war toys.

The folks at Fort Knox are the US Army's experts on the use of armor.
They point out that tanks are great for certain things.  However, they
claim that tanks need infantry to protect them from people running
around on foot with small arms and are largely useless even with such
protection in certain circumstances, including city fighting.

Can a govt win a revolution by destroying its own cities?

>In any case,this argument that an armed population is a safe population is all
>bunk. Lebanon after all has one of the most heavily armed poplulations in the
>world (though Yugoslavia may now be competing with that title)

Strawman alert.  No one claimed that an armed population was
necessarily safe.  The claim was that disarming people provided no
benefits; the "gun control works" theory predicts that there are.

Lebanon and Yugoslavia are war zones.  Its people, who want to fight,
are armed by various govts, and such activities are never affected by
gun control.  Their experience can't tell us anything useful about the
benefits of disarming people who don't want to fight.

-andy