LOL, this. You’ll see much looser ROE on the US military than they’ve had in other, overseas COIN operations too. Especially when a few decision makers in Washington end up dead, and the remainder are forced to huddle together in a D.C.—turned Green Zone. One thing to order some Specialists and contractors down Route Irish and MSR Tampa to get blown up, but not embarrass the decision makers by leveling the adjacent city block after an ambush. It’s another thing entirely when the political leaders themselves start dying.
It would be a gigantic mess. No one rational wants to see that happen. But if it does, IMHO, elements of the US military would have no problem taking the gloves off against a domestic enemy. Particularly if the domestic enemy had done things like kill military family members. Ask the American Indian how that went.
We don’t even need anything so apocalyptic as the above. How much trouble did government employees have burning 76 people to death in Waco? Or shooting the four at Kent State that kopek mentioned. Who went to jail for the above? Who even suffered a setback in their career for it? Just needs to be the right sort of people, is all.
Come up with the right preamble, and reasoning, and you can justify damned near anything.
Let’s generalize beyond Tramp. It’s mathematically possible, if most unlikely, for for a presidential candidate to take the White House with 28% of the popular vote. Let’s say that, maybe because disenfranchisement and suppression, one side gains 40% of the popular vote and 51% of electors. Would that generate massive protests? YES! But armed rebellion? Unlikely IMHO but I could be wrong.
Back to the OP. What WOULD trigger widespread insurrection? For me, I don’t know. But what’s been proposed? Massive firearms confiscation. Massive election rigging. Massive shutdown of liquor outlets - would another booze Prohibition spark revolt? Or unpopular taxes. The early US (1791-94) saw the Whiskey (tax) Rebellion, with troops sent in - the rebels fled. Or think of a financial threat. Would flyover-country rednecks bear their arms if their government benefit checks were cut off?
Just curious about your thoughts: General Petraeus (and others I believe) have said things to the effect of “you can’t kill your way out of an insurgency.” Do you think he was wrong? Or that it doesn’t apply to CONUS?
Petraeus wasn’t wrong, for the theater and force he was talking about. For either Iraq or Afghanistan, there was zero desire to either go into the enemy’s sanctuary and root out anti-government forces, or to interdict the supply of arms, support, and fresh recruits. In Iraq, no one was seriously thinking of invading Syria or Iran to get them to knock it off, nor was there a movement (publicly anyway) to go to KSA or the Emirates and stem the flow of money, radical Sunni clerical support, or disaffected members of the societies from the jihad in Iraq. Ditto for Afghanistan and going next door to KP or the NWTA.
To use the example of the American Indian Wars, if the military isn’t willing to go find the tribes’ pasture grounds, and either confine or kill the tribes’ members, the military shouldn’t expect that they will ever be able to defeat their enemy. Even Sherman (or Sheridan, I forget who said the quote about seeing good Indians, because they were dead.) couldn’t kill their way to victory under those conditions. Now imagine a foreign power also supplying the Indians at the same time. Like the British, around the time of the Revolutionary War/War of 1812. The US wouldn’t win until force of population migration numbers threw the Indians off the land. Something that wasn’t going to happen in OIF/OEF.
The Soviets seemed to kill their way out of a few insurgencies just fine, in E. Europe, Ukraine, and most of the Central Asian states. They might have achieved about as much success as the Brits had in Afghanistan, were the Muj not supplied, or if the Soviets weren’t running out of money. Removing the insurgency’s source of supply works too. How many Communist insurgencies in Latin America continued post fall of the USSR? OTOH, Khadafy tried to blast his way out and it didn’t work. Who knows with Bashir Assad?
Anyhow, that’s how I’d distinguish Petraeus’s remarks. Mainly, I was trying to point out that, unlike those foreign insurgencies/COIN the US military’s been involved in, for a CONUS fight, the politicians would have skin in the game.
I think it would start with a massive protest in the streets of Washington DC, effectively shutting the whole town down. Eventually the authorities give the order to start arresting people, shooting bean bags, teargas, etc. I’m not sure exactly what happens after that, it really depends on how the military reacts when the DC leadership turns against the people.
Which, given the high respect the military has for order and duty, will depend entirely on which side is objectively the enemy of The Constitution. Given the actions and posturing of the current administration I think their involvement would be fairly brief.
And equating Kent State with The Branch Davidians is … well it’s either ignorant or disingenuous. In either case it is insulting to the memory of those killed at Kent State, and a position worthy of scorn and derision. Unarmed students protesting a war is unlike an armed and secretive religious cult engaging in systematic child rape and illegal arms dealing firing on ATF agents attempting to serve a search warrant.