These strategists imagine a scenario where the military defeats the rebels by carrying out surgical operations, designed not to impact any non-combatants. They talk about evacuating the affected areas so that they can engage the rebels in "high-intensity combat" with special ops, so as to avoid alienating the population. But this is pure fantasy in a scenario where the rebels have gathered enough military strength to pose real potential for taking entire urban centers. When the moment of confrontation comes, the military will have to resort to the same kinds of measures it applies to insurgents abroad.
Which will incentivize the population, as well as the many military personnel who come from the working class, to help the rebels. Che observed about his Cuban experience that "There are, of course, individual cases of military men who break with the past and enter into the new organization with a spirit of complete cooperation. These persons are doubly useful, because they unite with their love of the people's cause the knowledge necessary for carrying forward the creation of the new popular army."
We see potential for this in countries that are further along the path towards capitalist collapse than the U.S., like India. A major reason why India's military remains unable to totally subdue the Naxalite guerrillas is because the country's military strategists know that if they start effectively waging war against India's own people, sacrificing civilian lives to go after the guerrillas, the population will turn against the government. Which would lead not just to greater numbers for the insurgents, but to factionalism within the ranks of the military itself. Soldiers, especially ones who come from lower class backgrounds as is largely the case for the ones within the United States, become uneasy when they're ordered to start killing massive amounts of their fellow community members. And history has shown this kind of crisis of conscience to be especially prevalent among military personnel, at least relative to the police; in innumerable examples of revolutions, it's been the military members who've turned against the threatened regime, with the police remaining obstinate.
For this mass switching of allegiances among both civilians and military personnel to occur, there will need to be a widespread distribution of information about the war crimes the state will inevitably start committing against its own people. The military strategists are aware of this, with their plans including the shutdown of internet and cell phone access within the zones the military will occupy-as well as the direct suppression of online journalists who have potential to expose sensitive information.
The state is conscious that should it lose control over the flow of information during the moment of revolutionary confrontation, the revolution could win. That the masses, seeing evidence of the state's brutality, will be turned in sufficient numbers towards participating in the tipping point that analysts like Monsoor and Oriola believe to be possible within U.S. borders. The tipping point where the cadres which are prepared to serve the desire of the masses-that being the kind of "social reform" which Che described within a revolutionary context. And where the many U.S. military members with potential to defect can observe a viable alternative to their dysfunctional and abusive imperialist military structure. The state is not an invincible monolith, it's an institution made of people. And the way people act can rapidly shift from the norm under the kinds of extreme circumstances which our conditions are taking us towards.
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