There is so much miss information going on about the Vietnam war here. First off America was devastating the north Vietnamese threw out the whole war, casualties where for every 1 American killed at least 20 Vietnamese where killed. When it came to battles the Americans didn't lose a single battle against the Vietnamese forces. What forced America out of Vietnam was popular demand to end a unpopular war, which reached its greatest height after the Tet offensive which was militarily a massive failure for North Vietnam since they didn't achieve one object and suffered horrible losses but broke American moral at home.

Even then it is still hard to truly claim America lost the Vietnam war, mostly because when we left it was like Korea. We had Vietnam split into a communist North and a capitalist South with a ceasefire like the one Korea has now. We completely left Vietnam in 1971 and it wasn't until 1974 that North Vietnam started to fight with South Vietnam again but this time we did not come to help South Vietnam and in 1975 North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam. While ultimately South Vietnam did fall to North Vietnam it isn't like it fell while we where there and it isn't like we made a hasty retreat with South Vietnam falling shortly after like some post here seem to be implying but more of we beat the crap out of North Vietnam militarily, settled for a quick way out because of lack of support at home instead of finishing the job, and when the fighting started again years later we decided to stay out of it.

As for America being invaded by both Canada and Mexico I see it going like this. For Canada I see Quebec surrendering without the first few hours of the conflict due to its extremely French culture, I see the rest of Canada surrendering a few days later once they realize there living conditions and way of life would be basically the exact same if they where annexed by America and would accept American annexation without any real conflict. As for Mexico I see something entirely different, I see the ranks of Mexico's military swell to gigantic proportion with new troops ready to invade America. I see Mexico placing its new gigantic military on America's border ready to invade the South Western Part of America. I see the Mexican military crossing the border in such a pace that hasn't been seen since Blitzkrieg warfare in Europe and once over the border I see the largest mass desertion ever witnessed in world history of an invading military. Many of the former Mexican soldiers turning on Mexico joining the American forces in attacking what little remains of the Mexican military and helping in the conquest of Mexico in the hope they and there families will be granted citizen ship.

Of course I was being stupid in that description of America being invaded by Mexico and Canada and used as many stereotypes as I could think of without having slept for 24 hours.

[QUOTE="br0kenrabbit"]

[QUOTE="nocoolnamejim"] In which case it would be moral objections that prevent tyranny and not guns right? But in answer to your question, military is trained to obey. We've carpet bombed plenty of brown people in the past. But even if they were inclined do disobey... If there was ever ACTUALLY a serious second civil war, and if the federal government ever actually was tyrannical, then HELL YES that bombing would get carried out. Tyrants don't actually accept "Dude, I don't feel right about this" as an excuse for not doing something. That particular fighter pilot doesn't feel like bombing New York? Shoot him in the head after raping and killing his family in front of him. Have a few other fighter pilots watch. Want to make a bet on whether the next guy up says "no" to the order in question? True tyrants don't ask for permission and don't take no for an answer. Which means that, again, having any gun you damn well please wouldn't mean **** in the modern era.nocoolnamejim

After the difficulties we've had in 'backwater nations' the past decade, I don't see how anything short of a nuclear attack would pacify an uprisen American populace. You think a few insurgents with IEDs are difficult, just wait till every Bob, Tom and Joe are sniping from their front porches, or wherever you go to eat, or worship, or work, or whatever.

There's a difference between fighting an enemy a world away, and living among him.

I am not going to disagree that a truly tyranical government would do whatever it takes to crush an uprising but I find it highly unlikely a tyranical government would be willing to completely destroy its own city, especially a major city. Like I said earlier most of the fighitng would be urban/guerrilla warfare. In urban settings like in a city tanks are not an effective weapon. The limited space completely removes the range advantage a tank has, the tight roads severly limit mobility, and there would be abundant places to hide IED that could disable or destroy an armored vechile not to mention that it would also be somewhat easy to ambush a tank in a city and either capture or destroy it.

That just leaves air power as the governments last great advantage against an uprising. I am not saying that no air power would be used, there is no doubt it would be used but it would be extremely limited. More then likely attack helicopters and precision air strikes would be used. While difficult helicopters can be shot down without missiles and precision airstrikes by their nature would not cause massive amounts of casualties. I just can not see a tyranical government using massive bombing runs against an uprising because of the damage that it would end up doing to it self. What it seems people are overlooking is that unlike a foreign enemy where destroying there cities and infrastructure does nothing to truly hurt us, a tyranicall government destroying its own cities would cause massive damage to itself that it would have to repair after it crushed the uprising. Generally when a government tries to crush an uprising it tries to do it with as little damage done to itself as possiable and carpet bombing ones own cities doesn't match that.

It would give people a better chance fighting against a tyranical government. The people who says the military would easily destroy an uprising fail to realize the type of fighitng that would go on would be urban/guerrilla warfare where many of the advantages of the military has, like heavy armor, airpower, artillery, etc would be effectively nullified. History has shown that heavy armor performs extremely poorly in urban enviroments and the government isn't even willing to truely bombard foreign cities so there is no chance they would be bombing American cities with bombers or artillery.

This is not saying that an uprising would be easy with the second admentment because civilians generally lack training and discipline and at the start would generaly have to rely on numbers till experience is gained, but it would be far easier with the second admentment intact then without it.

Drink the blood of every Chinese civilian, men, women and children.

[spoiler] Just kidding of course. But America cannot and should not intervene and denounce or attack a country that has an equally strong military, that it borrows money from and receives a large amount of imported goods from. It's economically, politically and strategically a stupid idea to go in open war against another super-power (see Cold War.) [/spoiler]

Vesica_Prime

China's military is no were near as strong as the USA military. The Chinese airforce and navy are boths jokes compared to the US navy and airforce. As for ground forces the only advantage China has over the US is pure numbers, which means nothing due to China's lack of a proper navy and airforce. China simipliy lacks the mobility and logistical ability to effecively mobilize its ground forces against any US counter attack. You can have the largest army in the world but unless you are able to move it quickly and efficently it means nothing.

As for how the USA would react, the best possiable course of action that I can see would be to use the navy to protect Taiwan and prevent further Chinese landings and use the airforce to cripple Chinese food production and starve them out of the war.

I don't mean to be rude but when that picture of architecture is Hagia Sophia and was built by the Byzantines so that is actually Byzantine Architecture with a few Muslim minarets added.

Besides from that everything else is right and Arabic women are some of the most attractive in the world.

I wouldn't say college is a rip off but the problem is there are a decent amount of people in college who probably shouldn't be there. Those going to be engineers, doctors, scientist and the like need to go to college. Now those going for stuff like art, literature, english and the like probably should really consider if they need to be in college or not.

As for college book stores, those are a complete racketerring scheme.

I must admit this thread is making me laugh a bit.

So a coal mining company has its workers go to a politcal rally and can't pay the workers because of some legal issues and people get in an up roar.

But when the coal mining union tells its members to vote for Obama and the Union leaders use the members pensions to pay for the Obama campaign last election then tells the coal miners who retired that they will be recieveing cuts in their pensions due to lack of funds nobody cares.

I guess technicaly anything is possiable but with the amount of people who died, stasticaly there should be more then just a few sighting or a few areas where ghost can be sighted.

If you go with Dante's view on hell based on inferno a snowball actually has near a 100% of exisitng in hell as long as it is at the 9th circle.

That not everyone is equal.

If you go with the star wars universe answer it is because he is a Sith and Sith are always trying to gain more power, and becoming emperior gave him the most power he could get. Also it made it easier to elminate the Jedi.