I saw really interesting piece of commentary on this from a guy who studies US politics and military interventions. His point was really simple; the one big takeaway the whole world learned throughout the 2000’s and 2010’s was that you simply cannot effectively rule a population that does not want to be ruled. The US couldn’t do it in Iraq or Afghanistan, with all their firepower and technology and manpower. Even a tiny, tiny fraction of a population choosing resistance is enough to create an unending nightmare for an occupier.
And the difference, the really big difference, was that those countries were an ocean away. A Canadian insurgency wouldn’t be US soldiers getting IED’d in Montreal; it would be bombings in the US capitol, in New York, in LA. Canadians look like Americans, dress like Americans, drive the same cars as as Americans, and talk enough like them that the average American would at best think they were from another state; and the two countries are joined by one of the world’s longest borders. There is literally nothing that could stop Canadian insurgents from travelling to every single city in the continental US and hitting people right in their homes. It would be “The Troubles” on steroids. And they’d be doing this in a country that gleefully allows people to buy firearms off ebay with no background check or ID.
Imagine what things would have looked like if the Taliban could rock up to the home of any US senator in a pickup with a bunch of AR-15s. They simply do not have the domestic security apparatus to deal with something like that.
I saw really interesting piece of commentary on this from a guy who studies US politics and military interventions. His point was really simple; the one big takeaway the whole world learned throughout the 2000’s and 2010’s was that you simply cannot effectively rule a population that does not want to be ruled. The US couldn’t do it in Iraq or Afghanistan, with all their firepower and technology and manpower. Even a tiny, tiny fraction of a population choosing resistance is enough to create an unending nightmare for an occupier.
And the difference, the really big difference, was that those countries were an ocean away. A Canadian insurgency wouldn’t be US soldiers getting IED’d in Montreal; it would be bombings in the US capitol, in New York, in LA. Canadians look like Americans, dress like Americans, drive the same cars as as Americans, and talk enough like them that the average American would at best think they were from another state; and the two countries are joined by one of the world’s longest borders. There is literally nothing that could stop Canadian insurgents from travelling to every single city in the continental US and hitting people right in their homes. It would be “The Troubles” on steroids. And they’d be doing this in a country that gleefully allows people to buy firearms off ebay with no background check or ID.
Imagine what things would have looked like if the Taliban could rock up to the home of any US senator in a pickup with a bunch of AR-15s. They simply do not have the domestic security apparatus to deal with something like that.