Only 300?

I have conflicting data.

On one hand I have data points like this blog post and military officers who have privately told me that 20 well trained and disciplined men could completely change the political make up of this country. They make plausible arguments and I have only one data point to counter that claim.

If it only takes 300 (or 20) then why hasn’t Osama bin Laden (or the Weathermen, or whoever) deployed the 300 and done so? Is it that hard to find that many well trained and disciplined men? Or is it that those groups lack the motivation? Or is it that those claims are wrong. Just what is it?

The two data points are at odds with each other.

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8 thoughts on “Only 300?

  1. They are wrong. It is as simple as that. They make their projections based on static scenarios. But the other side no matter whom it may be, will not remain static, but will react. If possible they will wrest initiative from their foes and force them to react.

    Every battle plan is obsolete and useless after the first shot is fired. Adaptation is then the name of the game. The side who reacts best to the changing conditions wins. Twenty men or three hundred men are not deep enough to be effective through more than one or two permutations of battle.

    Simply put, they are wrong.

    Think the game of Chess. Which is taught as a war game. Which is stupid. Why? Because in chess one is only allowed one move at a time and has no realistic relationship to war, where many many things happen simultaneously and never is there a lull in reality, despite sometime appearances. Fluidity is the major vexing factor in war.

  2. It can be done. Take 20, or 300 well trained and dedicated snipers throughout the uSA popping heads of various … elites, and we’d probably see martial law in no time. It would take some extreme operation security.

    As to why the “bad guys” don’t? Who knows?

  3. I will say it only took a handful of dorks to make US Air Travel go from Unpleasant, to borderline unbearable.

    That’s a change…

  4. The devil’s advocate would say they DID completely change this nation.

  5. Well, yes and no. One person alone could completely change the political make-up of the country. Barack Obama isn’t even disciplined and he’s already wreaked a pretty fair amount of havoc.

    As to Vanderboegh’s idea, it has flaws. If he wants to act like the Viet Cong then he might be able to do some damage, but it’s not likely the kind that will win him supporters among the other 299,999,700 Americans. Guns are useful against “common criminals,” but once you start using them against the government you should be prepared A) to get crushed, and B) to alienate most people. Maybe in the other order, if you’re lucky. What you need is evidence of deceit, fraud, and incompetency. I’ll take one James O’Keefe and one Andrew Breitbart for even 3,000 Threepers. As much as Vanderboegh may view Americans as sheep, we’re more like donkeys: push too hard and we’re just going to dig in our heels, regardless of whether you’re going the right way or not.

    That said, how do you find 20 (let alone 300) people disciplined, skilled, and connected enough to pull this off?

  6. To be fair, Vanderboegh is doing a good job alienating people without firing a shot.

    Its too bad because I think there is some credence to the whole “threeper” philosophy. The only problem is there are a whole lot of people talking tough from their porches in gun-friendly states about “Lines in the Sand” and “Taking the Country Back”, while there are people like me who have to show a permit and sign registration papers to buy a .22 single-shot, or a box of ammo.

    The war is THIS WAY, Guys!!!

  7. First off the rule of organization comes into play.

    If you could train twenty individuals to perform successfully their assigned mission, you could in fact kill a bunch of politicians or political financiers (Soros for example). However turning death into a favorable political outcome is by no means guaranteed. The IRA hasn’t been able to pull it off in the last several decades.

    But killing people is easy, getting people to do what you want is generally hard. Especially in a group like the “Weather Underground” where everyone wants to be a chief and not an indian.

    Leftist groups are by nature too undisciplined to carry off highly narrowly targeted operations. This is why they prefer bombs to guns. Bombs are set and forget and let God sort the souls, guns are accurate, precise, and you have to look at who you are murdering.

    Right wing groups are inherently more disciplined, but with that also comes a large measure of self restraint. Nobody in the right mind wakes up and says “gee, I really want to murder someone” and then makes a rational plan with a high probability of success.

    The guy who can hire mercenaries though, out of work SPETSNAZ for example, provide them with capable arms, intelligence, and high probability of success (so they live to spend their paycheck) could pull it off. But political killings are distasteful, and getting a mission plan together so that your targets would not know about the attacks on the other targets would be key to success.

    Could it be done? Yes. Will it be done? I don’t think so. The intel alone to build the mission packet would require massive resources, which in turn would likely tip off defensive security agencies.

    Then again, in a year or two enough quality intelligence may be open source (such as appearance schedules) to make it a reality.

  8. Vanderboegh states pretty plainly that there are to be no Ft. Sumters. That is, the Federal Government _must_ be seen as to have been the instigator.
    I submit that at the present time, 20 guys _could_ go through our self-selected elite like a scythe through wheat, but with no provocation to point to, the ensuing public backlash would seal the fate of any chance of a return to the United States as codified in the Constitution.

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