Reply #37: Organize First, arm later

[happyslug]

When Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, he made the First Amendment first and the Second Amendment second for very good reasons. You need both, but without the First, the Second is useless, and without the Second the First is easy to surpress. Madison (and the rest of the Country) were worried about what will happen if tyrants would gain control of the Government (Tyrant is not the exact word needed to describe who was feared but I will use the word Tyrant for I can not come up with a better word for a person or group of persons who the people want to overthrow).

History has shown it is ORGANIZATIONS and people who are ORGANIZED that win fights against tyrants. Thus the First Amendment addressed the issue of HOW people can organize, how who to organize people.

During the Revolution and before the Revolution much of the support for the Revolution came from the Churches. The Churches are where people came to meet and assemble peacefully to state their rights. During and before the Revolution people wrote pamphlets, letters, newspapers etc to support the Revolution (and also to oppose the Revolution). Without these attempts to mobilize the population the Revolution would have FAILED. Thus the First Amendment has all of the rights needed to organize any group of people, Freedom of Association, Freedom of Religion, Freedom to Assembly, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press (all are inter-related and where one ends and another begins is hard to determined thus why ALL of them are mentioned in the First Admendment). Without the rights sets forth in the First Admenment you can NOT MOBILIZE any sizable group of people.

With the rights set forth in the First Amendment you can mobilize people and once you have moblized the majority of the people than the ruling tyrants must address this mobilized group of people. The problem is what happens when the tyrants refuses to address what the people want? What if (unlike the British in India and the Federal Government regarding the Civil Rights Movement in the South) the powers that control the Government are willing to use violence to suppress opposition?

In Vietnam you had two periods of LOW LEVEL Guerilla Activities, right after WWII as the French re-occupied the Country from the Japanese (and actually took the country back from the View Minh who had driven the Japanese back to just the ports at the end of WWII) and again from 1955 to 1964 as the North Vietnam switched from fighting the French (which ended in 1954 by Peace treaty giving Ho Chi Minh control of North Vietnam, and Diem control of South Vietnam) to overthrowing the Government of South Vietnam.

Now the high level Guerilla Activities in Vietnam were from 1946 till 1954 and from 1964 till 1975 (Only in South Vietnam during the period 1964-1975). By 1954 most of what would become North Vietnam was under the Control of the Viet Minh (With the Exception of Hanoi, Haiphong, and most of South Vietnam with the exception of the Mekong Delta which was pro-Communist). Thus the split of Vietnam in 1954 was along the lines both sides controlled (With the Viet Minh giving up the Mekong Delta and getting Hanoi and Haiphong in return). At that time period, if the majority of people in South Vietnam had been permitted to vote, they would have voted to join North Vietnam. The ruling classes of South Vietnam opposed that idea so no such election occurred. In response to this lack of an election the Communists started a slow growth of Guerilla activities in South Vietnam. To support these activities and to support increase activities in the future, North Vietnam started to build up its forces in the South. These forces became known as the Viet Cong.

The Viet Cong did not form a Battalion size units till about 1964. Thus between 1954 and 1964 all activities were Company (i.e. less than 100 men) or smaller attacks. These also tended not to be integrated (i.e. individual attacks to show to the people the opposition to the Government of South Vietnam existed, very similar to what is happening in Iraq today). By 1964 this guerilla activity was on the verge of taking over the Country. The Viet Cong knew they needed larger formations than Companies to take over the country, so they started to integrate the previously independent Companies into Battalions and Regiments. At that point the US intervened and delayed the wishes of the South Vietnamese people till 1975 when in what most people consider a fair vote the South Agreed to merge with the North (this was after the fall of South Vietnam to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops).

In Afghanistan a similar scenario played out, you had opposition to the Government of Afghanistan, which was in danger of falling when the former Soviet Union Intervened in 1979. Ten years later the former Soviet Union left and finally the Government of Afghanistan fell to the Islamic opposition (Which a few years later after tearing the country apart fell to the Taliban, but that is another story).

In all three of these situation the opposition to the Tyrannical Government first organized themselves at the village level, than into Companies, than into Battalions and Regiments. In Vietnam this was between 1954 and 1964, in Afghanistan between 1975 (and the fall of the King of Afghanistan) and 1979, in the case of the Taliban between 1995 and 1997 as they slowly took over the country, more by political maneuvering than military might. In fact the Taliban takeover was the most peaceful of the three but also the one not OPPOSED by foreign countries (Till it came to the Northern Provinces when Russia opposed the expansion of the Taliban let their brand of Islam be carried into the Islamic Republics of the former Soviet Union).

If you want an example closer to home, look at Castro’s Cuban Revolution of the late 1960s, again he first organized, made political opposition and when that was repressed went into Guerilla warfare to overthrow a tyrant. The FARC in Columbia is following a similar policy.

The first lesson of these campaigns is first guns, by themselves are useless. You must first organize the majority of people to support the guerilla activities and maintain a message to those same majority of people of the need to maintain the opposition to the tyranny.

Only once you have the majority of the people on your side you can do a successful guerilla war. If the people support the Tyrant you can NOT win. Opposition is NOT enough, the people must want to support you. Support means providing their sons to fight for you AND supplying you with the food and money to keep on fighting. This has to be “Voluntary, I use “Voluntary” in quotes for it is the same type of voluntary commitment people do when they pay taxes. People do not like paying taxes, but will do so for a Government (or Guerilla resistence Group) that offers to give them what the people want.

I go into the above to show you HOW the Second works in conjunction with the First. The First gives you the ability to form into groups that opposes an “enemy”, once you are formed up, like Castro’s Guerillas, The Viet Cong, The Afghan Guerillas, The FARC in Columbia, than and only than can you make your military move IF YOU HAVE THE WEAPONS TO DO SO.

Eastern Europe was occupied from 1945 till 1990 when the Soviet Union pulled out. The people of Eastern Europe opposed rule by the former USSR, but lacked the means to drive out the Red Army. Given the Military/ Political situation in Eastern Europe the people did not want another war and the USSR made efforts to make sure any opposition was muted. For example the removal of the Germans from Silesia and the Sudenland. These had been hot points prior to WWII, so the Soviet Union removed the German population and gave their homes to Poles (in Silesia) and Czechs (In Sudenland). These new Settlers had to support the Government for if they did not all the Government had to do is threaten to fall and the title to they new homes disappeared with the Government. Furthermore the Armies of Eastern Europe were kept under constant watch and had inferior equipment to the Red Army itself. Finally, the Soviet Union’s hand was light on matters NOT involved with ruling. Finally, the actually ruler where locals, who had some popularity with the people, and these politicians AND the people knew that to much opposition would lead to total war with the Red Army something, the people, their Armies and their Politicians all opposed.

Please note once the threat of Red Army intervention was removed by Gorbachev, all of these countries overthrew their Communist leadership and installed governments more in line with Western Style Democracy (and the only Eastern European Country that had any violence was Romania, where the Army backed the People against the Rulers and their Police followers). The chief reason for the relatively peaceful transition is that Eastern Europe had Universal Military Service, thus the Army consisted of the people (more like a militia than a regular army). Thus the Army of these countries could not be used against the people (unless the people supported such use. This is a major difference between Eastern European Countries and the Countries mentioned earlier (Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cuba and Columbia) these countries’s Armies are all “Voluntary” i.e. hired mercenaries with some draftees to fill in the lower ranks. The people of these countries and these countries’s armies are NOT the same (And very similar to the present US Volunteer Army).

Thus to have a successful revolution you need organization first. That is sufficient unless the Tyrants decide to use force. A Eastern European style army can not be used for that activity and as such if a country has such an army the revolution will tend to be peaceful. The problem is most of the world who are ruled by Tyrants who have mercenary armies. Such mercenary armies will do anything to keep their paymaster in power (and themselves paid).

To destroy such an army requires a slow destruction of its ability to supply itself and to pay itself. Thus any successful Guerilla war has first to separate the Mercenary army from its ability to be paid and feed. Protecting the Peasants (or other poor people) when possible but mostly tying the mercenary army in futile efforts to get supplies (i.e. food to eat and money to buy weapons with and to pay themselves). The Army of South Vietnam was noted for this and once the US left, where unable to stop the onslaught of both Guerilla and Regular forces of North Vietnam that lead to the fall in South Vietnam in 1975. The Army of South Vietnam needed to disburse to collect the taxes (including food) and thus were targets for the Guerillas, at the same time it needed to stay together to fight off any attack by the regular forces allied with the Guerillas.

This same tactics where used by Washington to destroyed the British Army during the American Revolution. Washington by keeping his regular forces together, forced the British to keep their forces in New York and their other bases, for fear that Washington’s Continentals might launch an attack against them. The problem for the British was that by staying together they could not gather food and fodder for their horses. Thus the British Army in North America slowly died Now, Yorktown was a great Victory over the British, but the British was still in a very strong position after Yorktown but still had the strain of maintaining an army AND fighting Guerillas. This was to much and the British decided to cut their losses and used Yorktown as an excuse to go back home to England. The same thing was happening to our army in Vietnam from 1964-1970 and later what destroyed the South Vietnamese Army.

Castro used the same tactics, maintaining a strong central force while maintaining a widespread Guerilla Army against Batista. The FARC is doing the same, it has a large centralized Army, but also a huge number of Guerillas fighting the Government of Columbia thoughout the area FARC controls. Washingont tactics where copied by the North Vietnamese when it kept a armored division just north of the DMZ during the whole Vietnam war waiting to pounce when it was the right time to attack (The Armored Division stayed north of the DMZ during the Tet Offensive of 1968, but did strike in 1975). The Taliban did the same tactics on its march to power, maintained a strong Army that would fight, but preferred to deal and set up Guerillas and than take over another section of Afghanistan. The Taliban used these tactics to take over most of Afghanistan. These tactics only failed the Taliban when they moved out of areas dominated by Pathans and into areas of other ethics groups in Afghanistan (And the Taliban had limited ability to use Guerilla tactics in these areas) . During the Afghan War, the fact that the Guerillas could maintain a fairly large force in both Iran and Pakistan contained Soviet attacks.

Now, you may say “Hay, you are talking about Islamic and/or Communists groups not ‘Western Liberal resistence groups’”. And you would be correct. As I said in the beginning the first step in a guerilla war against a tyrant is to first organize. The Islamic and Communists Groups were the best at organizing people. “Western Liberal Resistence Groups” were less effective in organizing resistence groups (And less liked by the CIA and KGB who tended to fund these groups, remember any war is expensive, money talks).

Furthermore since most Islamic and Communist groups tend to be the first groups outlawed they tend to go underground first. Once underground they start to organize and as other groups are outlawed those groups tend to join the opposition which tends to be either Islamic or Communistic. Once outlawed these groups also tend to be controlled by the most fanatic opponents of the Tyrants and these tend to be either Islamic or Communistic. Thus to oppose the Tyrants you have to support a side with enough discipline to get the job done and that tend to be Communist or Islamic.

And do not think these can NOT be democratic, Iran while not a Western Style Liberal Democracy, has more freedom than any other country in the Mid-East including Iraq and excepting Israel. The Islamic leadership has problems but they are not the tyrants the Shah had been. Castro has jailed opponents, but he is NOT the Tyrant Batista had been. While the Overthrow of the Communist Government of Afghanistan was a disaster in Civil Rights (Especially for Women), under the Taliban you finally had peace that most of the people of Afghanistan accepted.

My point is ORGANIZATION is important, but without weapons such organization is worthless. The Chinese used Guerilla tactics against the Japanese and the better equipped the Guerillas became the more effective they became. Finally as WWII ended they became strong enough to drive out the Japanese (as the Japanese tried to hold onto anything it could as the US prepared to Invade and as the Soviet Union Took Manchuria from Japan). The better equipped the Guerilla is the better job he will do, and if equipped and organized good enough (i.e. the Universal Service Armies of Eastern Europe) the people being opposed by them will not even try to suppress the revolt (i.e. Eastern Europe in the late 1980s) or if suppression in tried quickly defeated (Romania).

It is when organization and/or weapons are missing that Tyrants last for any length of time. For example Castro has ruled as a Tyrant, but he is popular and therefore the opposition has been unable to formed a popular uprising against him (Castro’s opponents has the weapons but no popular support). Eastern Europe had the weapons but also no will when under Soviet occupation (but as soon as the Red Army withdrew they did overthrow their dictators).

Thus the point of this paper, it takes three things to overthrow a tyrant,

1. Popular support, you must have the majority of the people on your side (i.e. Democracy, even the Communists and Islamics both try to show they have the Support of the Majority of the People),
2. Organization to perform the overthrow (This is why Madison wrote the First like he did, these are HOW you organize an opposition. Without the First it is hard to organize an opposition and any resistence organized in absence of the rights stated in the First tend to be as tyrannical as what you are opposing)
3. Weapons to push the issue if the leadership that is being overthrown tries to use force to stay in power. You have to be willing to answer force with force. Weapons do not overthrow a tyrant, weapons just protect the people who are overthrowing a tyrant.