One of the big reasons why I have been saying that we want to avoid a war in this country is the quote that is the headline for this post. It’s from a movie: Rules of Engagement. It stars Samuel L Jackson, a Marine commander who gets hammered for having his Marines fire into an armed crowd. One of the lines in the move sees Jackson say: “Did innocent people die? Innocent people always die.”
The civil war that both sides seem intent on having will be ugly. War isn’t a game where two sides engage in some football game where the players, rules, and boundaries are clearly defined. Americans think that war is some sort of game, a crucible where masculinity is defined. It isn’t. It’s messy. It won’t just be players getting targeted. The combatants will be targets. So will the people who deliver food. So will their families. Women. Children. The side who refuses to participate in that will lose. The following exchange took place at another blog:
ANON: no one is going to stand up to the jack-booted thugs nor will they retaliate in any goddamned way whatsoever: if Ruby Ridge wasn’t enough to muster the hearts and minds–not to mention Waco, then nothing will. One man (McVeigh) took action and that was it…but you do you.
BLOG OWNER: things change when they go after a man’s home and livelihood. Surely even you can figure that out. Maybe.
And that whole McVeigh thing you seem to imply that was so great….. that was terrorism, asshole. Innocent people died in that bombing.
They both make good points and are both mistaken. Anon fails to realize that people are resistant to fight, because they know that there is no going back. Once the fight is joined, things are going to get ugly. Once the first pushback occurs, innocent people will die. The OKC bombing? Yeah, that sort of thing will have to happen. Innocent people will die. Call it terrorism, call it war. There is no difference, especially when one force has a daycare center right in the building that contains legitimate targets.
Philosophically, what is the difference between the OKC bombing and the Allies bombing Dresden? How about firebombing Tokyo? Remember learning about Sherman’s march to the sea? Sherman said “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people. It is necessary to make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” His troops left a trail of destruction and dead civilians in its wake.
The northern troops gave no mercy. “it isn’t so sweet to secede,” one soldier wrote in a letter home, “as [they] thought it would be.”
That is war. I fear that it is coming. No quarter will be given.
27 Comments
Don Curton · August 13, 2022 at 8:17 am
Pro tip, make sure your plate tags are current so you don’t get randomly pulled over. Just saying.
Elrod · August 13, 2022 at 8:28 am
“That is war. I fear that it is coming. No quarter will be given.”
Absolutely true.
When a struggle begins, from international war all the way down to the thug with a knife in the 7-11 parking lot who wants your wallet, it is an “all or nothing” affair – for the duration nothing else matters, not appearances, not morals, not rules, not laws, nothing but the struggle. It’s win or lose. Whatever consequences may exist, they exist only outside the struggle to be dealt with afterward.
When CWII starts here, and it will, someday, the same will be true. It will be brutal, vicious, and violent beyond imagining. There will be no non-combatants because sides have long been chosen, attitudes and behaviors hardened; there will be only one winner and everyone will want to be on the winning side.
Hope, pray and work for peace but prepare accordingly for conflict.
Especially mentally.
Papa · August 13, 2022 at 12:51 pm
The northern troops gave no mercy. “it isn’t so sweet to secede,” one soldier wrote in a letter home, “as [they] thought it would be.”
How did it get to that point, that way of thinking? Not even 100 years after Lexington and Concord, Valley Forge, Carolina campaigns, Yorktown and others.
A.B Prosper · August 13, 2022 at 9:08 pm
Some folks can’t leave other folks alone. Human nature, really.
Steve S · August 13, 2022 at 9:30 am
“Kill them all. Nits make lice.”
Yep, even the innocent. And that line or variation has been with us a while https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/02/11/nits/
Big Ruckus D · August 13, 2022 at 7:08 pm
When one considers this (nits make lice) suddenly there are a Iot fewer “innocents”. Look how many kids of less than even high school age have already had their minds poisoned with leftist ideology by either their parents and/or teachers. Once turned into rabid marxists (and many are exactly that), it is nearly impossible to reach them and bring them back to sanity. And why would I, as it would require time and resources I cannot spare just to attempt such a folly?
So, what to do about the fact they will grow into future combatants, dead set on destroying anyone who fails to adhere to “their way”. While I don’t yet relish the thought of dispatching the underage (though circumstances are likely to dissolve such reluctance as things get much worse) I know they will pick uo the mantle of active violence and attempted revolution against me and mine, as that is exactly what they have been raised and trained to do.
Then there are the spouses of those who are actively evil. Why should they be spared? I do not consider them innocents, as they provide aid, comfort, cover and material support for the activities of the bad operators they are married to. Obviously, they will side with a spouse acting unethically and even illegally before they will consider my protest that the asshole they love is doing bad things to me. Under those circumstances, fuck them too.
Besides, in war, they are valid targets even if only to break the resolve of my enemy. If the bad guy knows he will come home to find his house and family incinerated while he was out playing brown shirt against mine, maybe he’ll stop being the asshole oppressor and stay home to protect his family instead of fucking with mine. And if not, he (or she) gets exactly what they deserve when they finish their shift as one of the tyrants operatives, only find everything they valued reduced to charcoal (or worse, as the more vindictive and creative amongst us will undoubtedly demonstrate in due course).
Really though, this is all needless discussion, a verbal circle jerk. Violence is assured because it is the way of human nature to fuck up hugely at certain intervals in time. And the part of the cycle where overt oppression and violence is guaranteed to be employed is now upon us. Yes, innocents will die. Non-innocents as well, who will be mischaracterized as needless collateral damage. These will be created out of whole cloth by media/gov as useful psyops, as they have already been doing for many years (i.e. st. trayvon of the skittles, and other such cases where shameless rewriting of reality goes on unchecked). Good guys will be killed by the system’s hired guns, some by surprise, and some while engaged in both justfiable premptive strikes and retalitory counterattacks.
The state (or the majority, in even more basic terms) cannot, and never will see itself as wrong, the entirety of the covid reponse 2020-2022 has shown us that in a way that will be hard to surpass. They can and will jusify and rationalize every bad act, no matter how morally repugnant. And to the extent they can control the narrative, they will whitewash it all so those acts that look too awful to justify in retrospect will not even be acknowledged, and more likely just flat out denied.
That is why it won’t matter when the good guys also dispense with all restraint, as failing to do so – and remaining passive, is certain death – while rising up against tyranny is only probable death. Only a pussy will chose certain over probable death by chosing not to act in their own defense when they can see the trajectory of events before them. And consider that such defense will also require offensive measures against known bad actors as well, in order to end their ongoing atrocities at the individual level.
Suck it up, because it’s coming irrespective of ones wishes or desires to sit it out. Humanity is its own worst enemy, and we are on deck to be witnesses to that yet again. There will be mountains of skulls, and which side takes the bigger losses is the only matter now to be determined.
ChuckInBama · August 14, 2022 at 9:25 am
Very well said.
Southernborne · August 13, 2022 at 10:14 am
People tend to think in terms of our War of Northern Aggression. I think it will more likely be more like Ireland, but your points are still valid. My family lived through the civil war in the south. The stories pasted down to me were of “hard times.” I fear hard times are coming.
Jonathan · August 13, 2022 at 11:55 am
Many Americans don’t realize how bad that was, and because it was a geographical fight it was not a true civil war.
As mentioned above, it will affect EVERYBODY, though I suspect it will be worst at the interface between different groups.
Tennessee Budd · August 14, 2022 at 6:14 pm
It wasn’t a civil war in any sense. In a civil war, two or more entities fight for control of the central government. The Confederacy had no interest in taking over the United States’ government. It was a revolution, just like the one almost a century earlier.
Borepatch · August 13, 2022 at 10:20 am
Great post. i put up some comments and a link over at my place.
And Southernborne, I think that Ireland is a best case scenario. I fear that it will be Sarajevo, with the rural red areas blockading the blue cities. Hunger and disease from bad water will kill more than bullets.
It’s dismaying to see so many people champing for the Starting Gun.
sawman · August 13, 2022 at 11:40 am
Be it a case of our own version of the Irish Troubles or a complete Balkanization hell is coming. It may not be the end of days but for many it sure will feel that way. Agreed that what bothers me most is those as you say “champing for the Starting Gun”.
Like so many others at almost 70 years old I have basically lived my life just wishing to be left alone. I paid my “fair” share, worked hard to support my family and advance my earning ability. I pretty much played by “the rules”.
Perhaps that is where the root of all our problems. The other side not only doesn’t play by the rules, they make up the rules as they go along to their advantage. They took advantage of all of us who just wanted to be left alone. They always were willing to compromise as long as it was our side doing the compromising. They were willing to play the long game and now 7 or more decades later they feel they have won and it is checkmate.
I hate to tell them but even at almost 70 I have plenty of fight left in me if it comes to that. They will never allow us to be just left alone to live our lives as we see it. The death and destruction that will be released upon this land will lay only at their feet. they could have just left us alone.
As Robert Gore wrote::
We’re closer to the real solution in the lament: “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” They – the special people – must leave us alone, it’s our moral right. Those who think the collapse will never come, or that freedom can be reclaimed without a fight, delude themselves. The craven adage: It’s better to live on one’s knees than die on one’s feet, offers a false choice. On your knees you may live to see another day, but you’ll never live to see better days. You may die on your feet, but liberty offers the only hope for better days. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.”
sawman · August 13, 2022 at 10:50 am
Agreed we are headed into our own period of “troubles” and those in Ireland took place over almost 30 years. There is no north, no south, no Mason/Dixon line separating possible combatants. Every state no matter how red or blue has its rural areas which are basically red and its urban areas that are blue. Every area including small town and rural areas have potential combatants living side by side. if you think you can remain neutral once the “troubles begin here you had better think again.
Hard times are already here. Not everyone feels them as of yet, but they will. What starts as hard times will slowly descend into hell in every corner of this land. As stated in “The Patriot”
“This war will be fought not on the frontier or on some distant battlefield, but amongst us — among our homes. Our children will learn of it with their own eyes . And the innocent will die with the rest of us.”
I have seen many keyboard warriors calling out for full on engagement claiming that the battle would be over in a matter of days. It will last for years and I fully expect the foreign enemies of this country to take full advantage of any civil strife and support one side over the other. Or even more likely to chose such a time to hit us with an EMP attack and send the struggle back to the same conditions the last “civil war” was fought under.
Seven years ago we moved to our homestead at the end of a relatively remote mountain gravel road and continue to strive to be as self sufficient as possible. We made that move in full expectation that hard times were coming. I hope I am wrong and I pray that I can live out my days watching the gardens grow from one of the rockers on our covered front porch. I am afraid that I will not have that luxury. May God have mercy on us all.
James Archer · August 13, 2022 at 11:58 am
Everyone involved in the start of war always underestimated the length, severity, and difficulty of the project. In our Civil War, for example, the North was signing up recruits for 90 days. The horrors that I see coming will dwarf anything we experienced then.
The odds that any individual or group will survive are low and depending on luck no matter how well prepared. To non-historians out there, I suggest a study of what was left of Germany from the 30 Years War. If you though WWII was bad…..
Yep · August 13, 2022 at 1:31 pm
Missouri and Kansas come to mind…….
Anonymous · August 13, 2022 at 1:55 pm
I can’t imagine this instance of war resembling any other in history.
There were never so many guns and ammo distributed so widely. In any conservative-ish families where the husband becomes widowed, the wife and children still have a bunch of guns and can still attack and defend.
There was never so much military skill available to the non-soldier with so little skill/training/practice. Optical sights? Night vision? Field manuals? Drones? Internet? GNU Privacy Guard with Web of Trust?
Large bombs dropped from the air and artillery, tanks, and similar WWII stuff are only cost-efficient against high-density targets, which the countryside isn’t and the urbans are.
Everybody has several computers? A large computer (smart phone) fits in your pocket? Internet is currently centralized because that’s cheap and makes advertisers money, but any old laptop can serve DNS and splinter off into a bubble. There is less crypto deployed today then there could be because it’s illegal, but once power projection starts fraying the splinters go dark. You know they’re there because you see the traffic volume, but that’s all you easily see.
Who is supplying the logistical tail? The rurals are going to manufacture fuel and electricity to give to the urbans to attack the rurals with?
Here’s an alternative prediction. The dollar is hyperinflated by the central planning idiots. With a hyperinflated currency, tax collection ceases to effectively transfer value to the center sufficient to fund the central idiots. The central idiots can no longer pay their employees. Reprisals against enforcers start by victims with equivalent weapons. Gun control of guns, small cheap cruise missiles, space exploration, and crypto ends. Amazon and ebay become Silk Road. Banks are replaced by Bitcoin, then Bitcoin in replaced by something which is a warehouse receipt for gold coins or barrels of oil. Rand Paul can no longer impose his church’s rules at gunpoint against Ron Paul, because Rand Paul can no longer collect “taxes”.
Anonymous · August 13, 2022 at 1:59 pm
Peace arrives. Peace is the state of Mutually Assured Destruction between groups of every size, all at once. Sure, group X can kill a portion of group Y, but that war would be tit-for-tat as nobody has a military advantage over the other. At which point, crime doesn’t pay and only the crazies do it.
Anonymous · August 13, 2022 at 2:41 pm
When threatened with liberty, most humans have agoraphobia and back the status quo. Easy Rider has a great speech by the Jack Nicholson character about this. But fractal MAD is coming due to technological innovation increasing the military strength of little groups faster than big groups. In the near term, most of humanity is going to be in a constant panic attack due to not satisfying genetic political instincts inherited from great ape ancestors. I hope that, like phobia treatment, exposure to the scary stimulus without experiencing bad consequences will let the panic weaken.
tfourier · August 13, 2022 at 3:05 pm
To put The Troubles in Northern Ireland in perspective. Even during the worst years in the early 1970’s the murder rate per 100K in Northern Ireland would just about qualify it for the Top 10 US murder cites last year. Most years during The Troubles it would not have made the current Top 10 US murder cities list. The high was around 50 per 100K in the early 1970’s. Most years under 10 per 100K.
The big difference was the regular car bombs and the widespread torture of civilians. Especially by the IRA. The “punishment beatings” involved drilling kneecaps using Black and Deckers when the local hospitals got too good at reconstructive surgery of bullet wounds to the knees. Many hundreds were tortured. Several dozen to death.
The only film you need to watch about The Troubles is Elephant by Alan Clarke. Made in 1989. It’s on youtube. In 37 minutes you will learn everything you will ever need know about what happened. And why. Its all in there.
Thats what a low intensity civil war really looks like. It aint nothing like the movies or what you see on the TV. Elephant is exactly what it looks like.
Led Through the Minefield · August 13, 2022 at 7:17 pm
External enemies will take advantage of CW2.
Yale Yankees built up CCP but the magic soil and replacements won’t be there to bail them out.
We aren’t getting any younger so might as well battle the forces of evil now or do you want to live in a global gulag?
Skyler the Weird · August 13, 2022 at 8:56 pm
This will be Civil War III. Civil War I was the Revolutionary War in the South. Tories under Major Ferguson and Banastre Tarleton vs Whigs under Marion and Morgan and the Over the Mountain Men lead by Sevier, Shelby, and others. It was almost totally irregular guerrilla fighting. Homes and Farms burned and families killed by both sides.
When the Tories lost at Kings Mountain. They buried Ferguson in a cairn but left the rest of the Tory dead to be eaten by wild animals.
Hopefully it won’t happen. But it has happened before and will happen again.
Dan · August 13, 2022 at 11:33 pm
Yes. In all wars innocent people die. A second civil war would be no different. People of all classes and groups will die. The real question is
how many innocent people will die if there is NOT a second civil war.
The criminal left has dropped their mask, they are no longer pretending. They are openly stating what they want, what they are planning and we SEE what they are doing. They intend to CULL THE HERD. That means KILLING millions of unwanted people….and THEY get to decide who those unwanted are. THAT is why a civil war is going to be needed….so THEY get a taste of the horrors and violence they are planning for most of us.
BobF · August 14, 2022 at 12:47 am
Some of know of a time when those on opposite sides, and those preferring no side at all, were of the same “uniform.” Dangerous times for all, including those on no side. Call them the innocents if you will. Very direct fire killed all categories because they were often indistinguishable. Whom to move to safety? Whom to avoid? Whom to engage? Not always a matter of collateral damage; sometimes (too often?) a matter of identification.
McChuck · August 14, 2022 at 4:52 am
The next war will last 5-10 years, and if we have 90 million patriots left in the country at its end I will call that a major victory. If we have 120 million, I will call that a miracle.
When only one side shows up to a war (the current status), it’s called genocide. Choose – the surety of death and defeat, or the chance of death or victory.
Chumlee · August 14, 2022 at 8:30 am
Wouldn’t be anything if so-called leadership adhered to the document they took an oath to protect & defend.
They started this shitstorm; we will only react to it.
Hopefully in time.
Anonymous · August 14, 2022 at 1:27 pm
Hurrah, hurrah,
For planter’s rights hurrah
Hurray for the poor white boys who fight our rich man’s war
Most people are so enamored of the organized crime called government, that they would rather form up in scrimmage lines and die to preserve it, than stop it peacefully by monkeywrenching the mechanisms of tax collection.
Sardaukar · August 14, 2022 at 4:50 pm
From a retired officer that I highly respect, relating to the aftermath of the upcoming unpleasantness.
So I’ve been reading Douglas Murray’s latest book, The War on the West. Great book, aside from his regrettable penchant for the verbless sentence; great, especially, in illustrating who the enemies of our civilization are, how they operate, and what swinely cowards our leaders are who permit it and reward them for it.
I think, at this point, we have to concede that western civilization, as it has been, is terminal. Were I triaging it, I’d call it “expectant,” as in expected to die. These people attacking it, you know, are a sort of HIV in the body politic and the consensus of society. They infect. They weaken. They ruin…and, ultimately, they kill.
I would not, at this time, offer a way to save it…if, indeed, it could be saved. At the moment I am more interested in what western civilization, 2.0, looks like, should people be able to create it from the ruins of western civ 1.0.
I think, in the first place, that those future saviors have probably added a capital crime, Civilizational Treason, to the books, that looks a lot like our definition of treason, but with an expansive view of “making war upon” and “giving aid and comfort.” I expect they’d have hanged the woke and their enablers in clusters from Boston to Miami, Portland to San Diego, and all around Austin and Chicago. I can hope, at least, that this will not have extended to wives and children, but we cannot guarantee any such thing.
If it arises again, I find it hard to imagine that it wasn’t a result of a long and horrifically bloody war. There would be many veterans of that war. I suspect that many of them will find nice sinecures, sitting in the backs of classrooms, with unreviewable powers of life and death over teachers, who are possibly enserfed to their classrooms.
Corporate heads who have fed the woke? Look two paragraphs up.
Revenge…there will have been revenge. Moreover, you become what you fight. The writings of Ibram X. Kendi? Of “I am trying to falsely claim that I am an Egyptian” Coates? Will the victors in that war have burnt them all, all those execrable books and articles, or will a few copies be saved under lock and key somewhere? Indeed, statues of Marx, in the west, will have been melted down or broken apart for souvenirs. I have little doubt but that the victors will have returned every confederate statue. They may have destroyed many other statues.
They may be even more petty than today’s woke, digging up the graves of woke icons and feeding the remains to pigs. At least, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
Again, you become what you fight. I rather expect that society will be horribly racist, just as the woke are unutterably racist. I mean, seriously, is there any other likely end to come from the virulent anti-white racism on constant display today. Moreover, with every non-communist moral philosopher tossed on the trash heap over trivia, what is to restrain people? Religion? No, they’re wrecking it, too. I wonder if the corrupt toads looting Black Lives Matter ever wonder if they’re not merely serving as recruiting tools for genuine white supremacists. I suspect they don’t even as I suspect they are.
I suspect, too, that in that civilization, while some forms of free speech are fine, others will have been criminalized, with severe penalties. See that note on Civilizational Treason, above.
Journalists? Nah, they’re not going to permit freedom of the press, those future western civilizationists.
I doubt there’ll be much immigration allowed although I am pretty sure that millions of immigrants and their children will have gotten the boot. Indians (dot, not feather) are currently setting themselves up for this.
Women’s rights, trans rights, homosexual rights…somehow I doubt that civilization will care in the slightest about any of those.
“Force rules the world still,
Has ruled it,
Shall rule it.
Meakness is weakness
And strength is triumphant.”
None of this is something to aspire to. But I think it or something much like it will happen.
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