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Comment by lgbrandon | Hacker News Reader

just look to Vietnam. The military can occupy but it gets expensive. To win a true war you have to keep the local population happy and bombing them Won't achieve that. Plus you have to think the people in the military are going to be ok bombing local populations and possibly areas they have family. It isn't so cut and dry. I think a break could happen. We are at the end of this empire and the fall is going to be bad.

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You must not be American otherwise you'd know the answer to the (rhetorical?) questions. The American Civil War showed us the atrocities each side was willing to commit. It was warfare at a level the rest of the world wouldn't experience for decades to come.

And unlike the first Civil War, the United States didn't have the means to destroy the rest of the world should their weapons fall into the wrong hands. The world has an interest to concern itself and intercede. When you say the end of the empire is going to be bad, that's not the half of it - it's almost unthinkably bad.

The Civil War saw a US Army General, Robert E. Lee, defect to a cause he did not truly believe in, because he refused to fight against his home state. You might also want to consider how many veterans there are in the USA, that is, people with military service experience now living as civilians. Last census poll put that number at over 18 million, across all branches of service. Some might re-enlist to fight for the government, but you wouldn't even need 10% of them to go rebel to have a multi-million man rebel force with military experience and contacts within every branch to possible sympathizers. Absolute nightmare.

Not OP but am a born and raised American. That civil war that was a freaking 160 years ago! In what aspect would a civil war today be any similar to that one?

I was addressing our willingness to commit atrocities against one another. I don't see anything making me think that willingness has abated any in the past 160 years.

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