Okay, so I don't really feel like doing this, but as promised, I am going to go into some depth as to why an american resistance against the US military would prove more difficult than either the Vietnam resistance fighters or Taliban fighters have had.
Now this is going to make one big assumption, and that is that the military is willing to go along with this whole killing americans thing. I doubt that our military is one that would actually do this, but who knows, for this post its not relevant why or if i am right, simply know that i am assuming that the military would not defect for the purpose of this example.
1.) Terrain/infrastructure. One of the most difficult things about both campaigns for the US military has been the location. Vietnam is a giant jungle, allowing for supply paths to be hidden by the canopy. We tried using thermals and basically just bringing the entire jungle to the ground, but neither could stop the supplies flowing to the south. In Afghanistan, you have terrible mountain roads, if there are roads at all. Much of the country is at a high altitude, which diminishes the capabilities of helicopters, and makes resupplying forward bases a pain in the arse.
In comparison, while the US has rough terrain, we have the largest infrastructural system in the world. Our Interstate system is expansive, and allows for the rapid movement of vast quantity of supplies very quickly. While the state parks would provide vast areas for gorilla networks to operate, the ability of the military to surround these parks and so readily resupply outside of them would diminish the effectiveness of operating from them.
The terrain makes it difficult to use our advanced technology to its complete effectiveness. Sure we can put a bomb in any cave we want, but which cave? So we managed to get a tank in the mountains, great now it got hit with 4 rpgs from different directions. Our troops still kill way more than they are killed themselves, due to night vision, advanced optics, and body armor/superior training, but its not a formal war.
2.) Development. In Afghanistan and Vietnam at the time (even to some degree today) you are dealing with rural societies without significant urban populations. resistance fighters can move from small town to small town, find food and shelter, and then fight, run, and repeat.
In the us, only 2 percent of the population farms the land, and this is not distributed equally among the land. In places like los angeles and manhatten, no one farms anything. The wealth of these regions, the things that feed these people, are grown by an extremely small percentage of people that the military could easily control and force to work to feed their own troops, while starving major urban centers into submission.
No one in the Taliban gives a rats ass if the United States controls the major cities in Afghanistan. they will just hide in the mountains until we leave, and then stroll back in and retake them to regain political control.
This basically means that the US government could inflict massive amounts of damage without having to control huge swaths of land or large numbers of people, which cannot be done in Afghanistan or Vietnam. Farmers could be forced at gunpoint to farm for the military (you only need enough food to feed 1/300 Americans, and oil plants could be operated by the military for their vehicle needs, again the military only uses a small percentage of the petroleum we produce, so a vast reduction in total operating plants could still sustain the military's need)
3.) Distance. Just ask the Brits, fighting a war oversees that is costing men and money is unpopular. Even if you win almost every major battle, it will be difficult to secure more supplies and more men when you need them. In Afghanistan our forces are constantly beneath the numbers that could truly end the war, and in Vietnam, the Tet offensive showed that even more men were going to be needed to secure a victory.
This is to say that we tried to fight these wars within budget constraints. Unlike WW2 where we stopped building new cars to put out 42,000 tanks, we currently operate only 7,000 tanks (still 7 times what India has, and nearly 20 times the number of British challenger II tanks) we only sent what we thought might be enough, rather than everything we could.
In a us rebellion, I doubt that the Military would act as conservatively. we would get the full brunt of the US military, something that has not been seen in a huge amount of time.
4.) Availibilty of military grade hardware - Vietnam we were fighting the NVA, and the NVA supplied Vietcong. This meant AK-47s, not smith and wessen hand guns. They had grenades, light machine guns, and even Russian tanks. In afghanistan, they have tons of left over soviet munitions, and even some left over American weapons that were given to them to help the Ruskies. I doubt that the russians would be supplying our rebellion with RPGs, which makes us shit out of luck when it comes to trying to dent Abrams and Bradley fighting vehicles.
-
In the end, it comes down to stomach. Our rebellion would be successful if we were willing to pretty much all die, and cause a complete collapse of the society. At a certain point the Military would not be able to pay all of its debts, both foreign and domestic (troops wont murder their own people without pay) even while they were selling all of our resources to foreign nations.
However, I think that for all our talk of freedom, we would submit to the horrible power of our military and it would become a dictatorship.
Poll