What's the bare minimum it would it take to overthrow the US Government?

Great Debates
41

I refer you to post #12. My goal was to explore what would be required to overthrow the government, not plan for the aftermath or offer a better alternative to what we currently have. No doubt in many of the possibilities, a lot of people would die. That’s not desireable, and almost anything that followed would be worse than what we have now because of all the death and suffering (see Syria, for example).

I’m not advocating for an overthrow. I’m not saying “now is the time”, and I’m certainly not promising that it’ll all be worth it or that things will be better on the other side of a revolution. If a revolution were to occur, I think it’d be likely that we end up with a military dictatorship or some other authority that is even more detrimental to individual liberty than the EPA, DEA, ATF, and ObamaCare.

42

OK, so you’ve got a group of terrorists. You blow up a couple dozen federal buildings around the country.

And…the government collapses because of this? How does that work, exactly?

Governments collapse when the people stop acting as if the government exists. That means regular people ignore what the government says, cops stop enforcing laws, prison guards open the cells and let prisoners go, soldiers stop obeying the commander in chief and either head home or transfer their loyalty to some other person.

They don’t collapse because of a couple of bombings, unless the people believe that the bombings are proof that the government doesn’t work. That’s not going to happen just because a couple of Tea Partiers bomb a couple of federal buildings.

Countries where this sort of thing can work–a couple of bombings, an assassination, a general strike, and suddenly the government crumbles–are countries where support for the government among the population is paper thin. Nobody really supports the government but they go through the motions. And when bad things start to happen and the government is in trouble everyone just stands aside and does nothing. The government of the country is rotten through and through, and a stiff breeze comes along and the whole structure topples over.

That’s not going to happen in the United States. See, here in the United States most people believe in democracy, the rule of law, representative government, and so on. They’re not going to let Al Qaida take over just because a couple of bombs went off. People are going to support the cops to find the bombers, people are going to support soldiers fighting the bombers, people are going to support government officials who propose policies to fight the bombers.

A jihadist leader, or a militia captain, or an Army general, or Oprah Winfrey is not going to succeed in creating a revolution, because nobody outside of a few nuts is going to follow such a person.

You can’t just postulate that somehow the General of the 10th Mountain Division goes crazy, and somehow all of his subordinates go crazy in the exact same way, and with this force he conquers the country. Yes, it is possible for a general to go crazy. But in the United States and other first world countries, his subordinates won’t obey his crazy orders. Instead they’ll call the MPs and have the crazy general arrested.

43

But people would still rally against you, not for you. You would probably lose a large portion of your own organization if you tried a stunt like that…unless they were so utterly bugfuck crazy that any would-be dictator wouldn’t trust them to hold a butter knife lest they start their own little revolution with you as the target.

Did you forget that we have a third branch of government?

44

I think brute force is right out the door not an option. It would take vastly superior technology and forces to defeat the US military on their own soil, like sci-fi type resources and technology. I first thought about a shock and awe campaign of nuke strikes then a Cobra Commander type telling the US government to disband and allow the new Cobra force to take over, which would be an ever more amazing feat (that is, to create a force of that size and magnitude without any government, much less the US, hearing about and doing something about it). The scenario would play out very quickly with either MAAD or massive armed response to Cobra Command.

By toppling the US gov’t, I think you mean to also replace it. In either instance, I don’t see Cobra Command retaining control for any length of time without the will of the people. With no replacement government, the US would reform back in the US. With a replacement government, I expected armed resistance, militia, and the US military to provide extreme resistance.

So, the key in my mind is the will of the people. But, even a 50% electorate that is willing to take up arms to enforce their ideals (that is, they cannot simply vote in their ways) would like end in civil war. The issues would have to be so decisive that military personnel are willing to ignore their command structure to follow their ideals. I simply do not see any issue that would cause the populace to abandon the US government. Perhaps, if our elected officials all at once abandoned the governing ideals of democracy that when the military is asked to enforce the rule of law, that it is so unjust that the military will not execute orders? However, before that scenario ever arose, I don’t see what would stop other government officials or the US bureaucracy ousting the non-conformers out of office in the first place.

45

Oh.

You’ve just sucked all the profit out of this venture. The proper response to that is to go Galt.

46

I can’t even imagine a scenario in which this could happen. I think you would have to have a completely different world, as radically different as 2014 is from 1776 in terms of social issues, technology, just about everything.

47

The problem with that as it relates to the US, our soldiers take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. While there may be a large group of soldiers that are extremely unhappy with the current state of affairs, I doubt any significant number would be willing to take up arms against the Government.

Lets look at some examples in other professional armies.

The July 20th plot to kill Hitler. The German Army is pretty sure they are going to lose the war, AH has shown clearly that he is incapable of making good strategic decisions, and the end result could be the destruction of Germany. Many officers flatly refused to support or gave passive support because of their oaths of loyalty.

At the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war a large contingent of Iranian Air Force pilots were in jail because they had been plotting to overthrow the Islamist Government. Iraq attacks and they go from cell to cockpit and fight with distinction for Iran. Many of these pilots were later executed for their plotting.

I just don’t see it happening.

Capt

48

Excellent post, with a lot of great points, but I’m curious why you think this. Our super-power military struggled for years to defeat a few thousand / a few tens of thousands of Jihadists in Iraq / Afghanistan.

If the Glorious Revolution chickens ever came home to roost, and say you had 5% of the American population willing to engage in armed resistance or acts of sabotage (that’s ~6 million insurgents - maybe 100 times more than we faced in Iraq), I suspect they’d rather readily grind the military to a halt. I can’t imagine that we’d have any more lax rules of engagement here at home, against American citizens, in our own neighborhoods and towns, than we gave our troops in third world countries.

Our military bases are extremely poorly defended (see the Nidal Hassan shooting for a recent example). I suspect that 50 or 100 armed irregulars could wreak havoc on many military installations in the US. Hell, it even happened in Afghanistan, where they were on a war footing: 20 Taliban with AK-47’s and RPG’s destroyed 8% of America’s Harriers.

The supply lines to those military bases here in the US are even more poorly defended than the bases themselves.

49

Capt Kirk, I’m confused. You’re arguing you “doubt any significant number [of military personnel] would be willing to take up arms against the Government” and you cite, presumably as supporting evidence …

50

The one* scenario I could imagine that would over throw the government in the short term requires all of the Tea Parties paranoid fantasies turning out to be true. It would go something like this.

Due to major overstepping by the Republicans, the Democrats win massive majorities in both houses of congress in the 2014 election. Justices Scalia, Thomas and Roberts mysteriously disappear and are replaced by three left staunch left wing judges despite Republican opposition. With all political opposition quashed Obama and the democrats in Congress and the Supreme court reveal their true face as a socialist Muslim extremests. Guns and Christianity are outlawed, as are all members of the opposition party who are taken to FEMA re-education camps. All industry is seized by the government for the common good. Massive protests spark up across the country, which Obama orders the military to quell using lethal force. Much of the military rejects what they consider an illegal order. When Obama orders those commanders shot for insubordination, the military rebels, takes matters into its own hands and deposes Obama, congress and the supreme court in a coup.

Basically you would need the governments participation in laying the groundwork for your revolution by rallying the population against it.

*There is also a right wing version of this that works just about as well, but that would require waiting until 2016 to implement, also given the political culture of the military I think it would be easier to rile the military against a radical left wing president than a radical right wing one.

51

They failed. That’s the point.

52

Sounds like the script for “RED DAWN II-ELECTRIC BUGALOO!”, starring Chuck Norris and Zombie Charlton Heston.

53

HIS point wasn’t that they failed, but that he doubted they’d ever be willing to take up arms in the first place. It seems that they were willing, or at least the Iranian regime believed they were willing enough to have them executed.

54

The point is, people have to believe that they are fighting for something tangible if you want their support. For your revolution to succeed you have to make your result more desirable than what you are revolting against. All the scenarios you’ve proposed so far would, at best, provide you with a very temporary violent overthrow which would quickly be taken care of. Tell us what your better idea is first, and then we can tell you how best to accomplish it.

55

If a foreign military were occupying the United States, then an insurgency against them has a goal. The goal is to make it very costly to occupy the United States, and so eventually the foreigners get bored of getting shot at and bugger off back home.

This is why the United States left Iraq and is leaving Afghanistan. We could stay and continue to occupy either country for decades, but what would be the point? The losses we took were miniscule compared to the losses the Iraqis and Afghans suffered. But what were our gains? We toppled Saddam, we toppled the Taliban. OK. Now what? Stay there forever? Or bugger off back home? The gain for the insurgents is clear–get the US to leave the area.

But how has the insurgency in Iraq done now that the US has is no longer conducting major combat operations there? Well, they’re bombing shit and so on, and people are still dying, but they haven’t made much progress toppling the regime have they?

And that’s because the government forces don’t have an exit strategy. Where are they going to go? OK, a couple of really high-level guys can take their saved graft money and live in exile in Brazil or wherever. But most of them are stuck there.

Same with the United States during a domestic insurgency. You think that after getting bombed enough times the American people are going to get tired of wasting all this blood and treasure and decide to pull out and go back home–to where? I suppose Obama can go back to Kenya, but what about the rest of us? The worse the insurgency gets the more incentive the rest of us have to fight the insurgency. And it’s gonna be a heck of a lot easier for pro-government agents to infiltrate and monitor a domestic American insurgency that it is for them handle an insurgency of Iraqi muslims.

I huge problem in Iraq and Afghanistan is that while most people aren’t interested in fighting American forces, they also aren’t interested in helping the Americans fight the insurgents. If an Afghan knows where a militia group is assembling, he keeps his mouth shut and goes about his business. What’s in it for him to call the local government office who will call the Americans to clean them out? How does he know the local government guy isn’t on the militia side? Even if he cared which side won the war?

How would that play out in the United States? People aren’t going to stay neutral.

An insurgency to kick out a foreign occupier is a different from an insurgency to overthrow a domestic government. A couple of bombs could easily be enough to convince the foreigners to go home. It sure isn’t going to be enough to convince the domestic tyrants to give up.

56

Oh, and the reason US military bases are poorly defended is that nobody ever tries to attack US military bases. If there were a domestic insurgency, then that would, you know, change. Unless you imagine that the insurgency can succeed with one glorious push that topples the US government in one stroke. Which isn’t going to happen unless the American people decide that they’d be better off without the US government.

57

The OP is basing his scenario on a sewing-thread’s line of fact, and a weelbarrow-full of assumptions. It’s already been fleshed out in multiple posts, but the biggest assumption I find laughable (and mildly insulting) is the “swaying” of tthe military to ‘support’ the “revolutionaries.”

I, as one of your mid-level Officers, have indeed sworn an oath to ‘support and defend he Constitution of the United States, against all enemies foreign and domestic’, and frankly, there are plenty of existing laws and procedures to remove, impeach, or at least isolate and contain those that threaten the Constitution and its lawfully passed legisllation. In the event your “revolutionaries” are in fact able to wave the magic wand and decapitate the Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary branches, you forget that there are continuity of government plans in place already (thank the Soviets for that necessity).

Your evaluation of our military bases and their security are flawed, as is your evaluation of our supply lines. We’re winding down a conflict where we wrote the textbook on counterinsurgency, and how to protect our critical assets and people, with constrained resources. I personally worked networks of insurgents to figure out which ones to arrest and incarcerate, for maximum effect. In short, I know your game better than you do.

Your revolution would be bloody and useless, and if it hadn’t already alienated you from your followers, it would by tomorrow. The best defense he US Government has against revolution is the stability its maintained for over 160 years. . . and even then, it held over the Civil War.

What does scare the living sh*t out of me? It’s your revolutionaries’ use of IEDs, and the human toll it will waste. I’ve broken up several of those networks, and the evil in those peoples’ minds still scares the hell out of me. If you’re going to commit to this revolution, man, you’re going to need a lot more than a small percentage of a population, and you will not be able to play the ‘key position’ card.

Your best way to revolutionize the government is to re-elect an entire new Congress, and do so regularly (with a serious look at term limits).

Tripler
Clearly, you have not thought this through.

58

Tripler,

Clearly you haven’t read what I’ve posted. To reiterate: I’m not advocating for any insurgency, so to call it “my revolution” is silly and inaccurate. To the NSA goons reading this: I have no intention of ever leading or fomenting any sort of an insurgency.

It’s a thought exercise, which requires one to make a bit of a leap beyond what they see as possible or probable today. The point isn’t that “there’s nothing that’s likely to start a successful revolution tomorrow” (a point with which I agree), but “if a successful revolution started tomorrow, what kind of support would it need and what tactics would it adopt to be successful?”

For example, something that’s not actually going to happen, but if it were, might goad a portion of the military into fighting against the government, might be something like: Obama announcing he’s going to run for a third term, and a few Supreme Court justices suddenly disappear so that a majority of the remainder are persuaded to not declare it unconstitutional. Could something like that happen? Almost certainly not. If it did happen, could it push a portion of the military and country to take up arms against the federal government? Perhaps. And how many of them would it require to succeed?

I agree completely with “Your best way to revolutionize the government is to re-elect an entire new Congress, and do so regularly”, that’s just not the question I was asking in this thread.

59

One guy (Dorner) put all the LEOs in southern California into a frenzy (and they even knew who he was!). The two Boston Marathon bombers did the same in Boston. They each consumed the attention of thousands and thousands of LEOs. Now imagine not just one or two Dorners, but 10,000 or 100,000 or 3 million, all acting within the same couple of days, dressed in plain clothes, hiding among the civilian population. Do you think the federal government would be effective in such an environment?

60

Almost certainly not?
If Supreme Court justices suddenly disappear, then others will take their case. If there is the slightest hint that those remaining are in danger, protection will be provided. If the President decides to run for a third term, his name will not be put on the ballot. Nothing you propose requires a revolution as a solution, I’m afraid.