From: yarvin@cs.yale.edu (Norman Yarvin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Registering "Assault Keys"
Date: 18 Nov 1992 23:26:07 -0500
Organization: Yale Computer Science Department
NNTP-Posting-Host: cathy.na.cs.yale.edu

fiddler@concertina.Eng.Sun.COM (steve hix) writes:
>In article <1ecb0eINNsgf@CATHY.NA.CS.YALE.EDU> yarvin@cs.yale.edu (Norman Yarvin) writes:
>>andy@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Andy Freeman) writes:
>>>Tanks aren't useful to govts in a revolution because the revolutionaries
>>>don't have fixed positions.  Since tanks are only useful for attacking
>>>fixed positions or other tanks, tanks don't help the govt.
>...
>>And try telling the
>>Marines who fought in the tunnels of Cu Chi -- such a vast network that it
>>was never fully explored -- that guerrillas do not have fixed positions.
>
>The tunnels at Cu Chi (and like installations) are most definitely the
>exception.  If that weren't the case, Viet Nam would have been a much
>different story...with fixed positions vulnerable to attack.

My reading suggests a different story.  The enemy had a good many base camps
and tunnel complexes, but were extremely adept at hiding both their existence
and (once discovered) their extent.  The style in which we waged most of the
war---as a large-unit affair---meant that we had difficulty finding them.
Small-unit operations organized so as to seek out and attack the enemy
worked much better, but were not done on a large enough scale to affect the
course of the war.

>>There is nothing too much to argue about here.  We basically agree that the
>>outcome of a guerrilla war does not hinge on who has the most tanks and
>>airplanes.  It is only your exaggerations of this, like saying tanks are
>>never useful, to which I am objecting.
>
>He didn't say that they weren't useful, only that they weren't critical
>to a governments success.

Is this meant to be a joke, or are you just an idiot?  Read his article.
You even quoted it!  He said, in so many words, that they weren't useful.

>Off-duty policemen, mayors, city councilmen, etc. would be much more
>likely targets, and as vulnerable as your sanitation engineers.
>
>>Cutting electric power lines would be a bit more productive,
>>but to produce a change in government, the revolution would have to do more
>>than just terrorize people.
>
>You need to review your Guerrilla warfare manuals.  What do you think is
>the main tool of beginning (especially successful) guerrilla movements.

Terrorism in and of itself it cannot not produce a change in government.
There is one exception: assassination of somebody like the President.  Lone
tyrants can be and have been brought down by such means.  But modern
collective tyrannies are often less susceptible.  There was nobody in, say,
the former Soviet Union whose assassination would have changed the form of
government.

Terrorism is of great value in furthering propaganda.  But without any
propaganda, or with insignificant propaganda, it would be of no use except
to lower the standard of living of the country.  If people did not know the
motivations of the terrorists, they would appear as senseless as the gunman
in Texas who shot up that store.

>>You seem to believe in the myth of the revolutionary who appears out of
>>nowhere, strikes, then vanishes without trace.  This is an myth to which the
>>Vietnam war gave a great deal of publicity.  However it is still a myth, or
>>at most an exaggeration.  In Vietnam we often found the enemy's base camps.
>
>And how effective destroying those base camps was!  Norm!!  Pay attention
>to what you're saying.

What I said was not at all self-contradictory.  We found base camps, and
destroying them was a worthwhile project that hurt the enemy.  The only
problems with it were that we didn't find the base camps often enough, and
that some of them were across the border where we didn't generally go.

--
Norman Yarvin						yarvin@cs.yale.edu
 "Riot, n.  A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent
  bystanders." -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_