[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Ace Oliveira

If the Soviets invaded, you can be damm sure they wouln't give a shit about collateral damage. MiGs would have been bombing entire towns and citys that had anything that could help the US Government. Hell, they could even fire bomb citys, if the Soviet had napalm or the something like it.

Even though the Russians are more ruthless than their Western counterparts (as evidenced by case studies from the Hungarian Uprising to the recent Chechen Wars), I don't think they'd bomb entire towns and cities.

All invading armies recognize that they need the cooperation of the local civilian population, unless they're willing to resort to plain genocide. Bombing cities with intent to kill lots of civilians is not SOP nowadays, at least not for major states like Russia (if you're talking Third World hellholes like Sudan, that's another story, but those are the kinds of countries that could never invade the U.S. even if they wanted to, so it's a moot point).

Originally Posted by Ace Oliveira

There is also training. A lot of people will learn how to reload weapons and all that, but what about knowing how to fight the enemy? Especially without vehicles. The arms dealers could sell vehicles to the rebels and maybe even train them, but i doubt that. Some one correct me if i'm wrong.

Training, again, has nothing to do with weapons in guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla tactics are pretty simple - hit-and-run attacks, IEDs, things that wear the enemy down. The big challenge is endurance of extremely bad circumstances. Guerrillas win when they outlast the conventional forces by denying them victory, so that the enemy is forced to cut their losses. Poor people who have lived in squalor (or awful terrain) can take this kind of warfare. Americans, on the other hand, can't.

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

That's not really a big issue.

The average CIA agent could only withstand 7-14 seconds of waterboarding (which is mild torture if any)

A priori argument. When a CIA agent gets tortured, he might give up secrets, but they're rarely secrets that can completely topple the American system (because most of those are above his pay grade).

On the flip side, torture is a HUGE determinant in winning guerrilla wars. It's a lot easier for a captured guerrilla to give up info that can completely undermine the entire insurgency.

You also are ignoring just about everything else I've said.

Originally Posted by predator20

If an average person is fighting to survive, American or any other. They may not want to become a guerilla. But will if they had to in order to survive. A person can adapt easy when it's their own life at stake. It may be a miserable way to live, but better than being dead or worse a prisoner.

Key words here...fighting to survive. You're assuming a totalitarian government would put Americans in those kinds of conditions. I hate to break it to you, but as long as the average person in America (or most other civilized countries in the world) has the ability to get food, water, and electricity, they aren't likely to decide that they have much incentive to overthrow the regime.

If you look at the list of insurgent movements that have emerged in the last century, you'll find that 99% of them are started by the poorest, most disaffected segments of the population, the kinds of people who have absolutely nothing to lose. That is not my opinion; it's statistical fact. And do you really think that any totalitarian regime wanting to take over America doesn't recognize this?

Another thing you're forgetting is that many such regimes also come to power after starting out as insurgencies against the existing government.