At which point, the peaceful, democratic methods of resolving disputes will be lost and the question will come to violence. That violent calculus is extremely different. A few hundred ICE guys, backed by a couple thousand passively accepting national guard is enough for a coup...
...but for, say, a nation-wide campaign of counter-insurgency in response to civil unrest or even effective civil war as a *result* of that self coup? Well, 200,000 wasn't quite enough for Iraq, a country 7 times smaller in population and 20 times smaller in land area.
The good news is that Hegseth is purging the military of everyone competent.
And I’d argue that the existence of multiple large, economically, politically powerful cities in the US would make things exponentially more difficult than Iraq. Bagdad had a pop of ~7 mill in 2010, and the second largest city, Najaf, had ~1.1. Seize DC, and you have ~ 20 bigger places to deal with.
Yeah, so a lot would depend on how much resistance you could expect from US cities.
And who do you really expect to put their lives on the line? How many? The time to call on all members of the armed services to fulfill their oaths to defend the Constitution is right now. (Reply not directed at you as much as to the general thread.)
Many of the things being asked of service members are constitutional due to the actions of Congress over the last century. That’s why this is a civ-mil relationship crisis, and why the general populace needs to stop putting this on institutions to stop. 1/
If the general public aren’t willing to put their lives on the line, we’re going to get exactly the government a disengaged, lazy, someone else should solve it for me population deserves. 2/2
In this scenario, I take comfort in the fact that wars are ultimately won not by killing some specific % of the enemy, but by breaking the enemy's will to fight, and "self-coup by an unpopular leader with a legally laughable rationale, followed by widespread civil unrest" is a morale killer.
Also after he fired most of the security state
an important dynamic here is that DC is only the political center of power. Lots of other countries have a giant metropole where the government, financial, cultural, and population are all centralized. You control that you have the country in other words. But in this case, DC is just A Place.
when the capital sends out orders and they get ignored is generally when stuff starts to get messy - if they can't be compelled or convinced to obey, at that point you de-facto have a split country, even if it's not legally stated or acknowledged at that point
You can only resolve disputes peacefully with people who dispute in good faith. With fascists, only the fear of God and lead will work.