Basically, yes. Military theorists have been talking about this for a while. The lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq really demonstrated that it takes a remarkably small percentage of population being actively willing to fight against you in order to make it functionally impossible to pacify a region.
And the thing about Afghanistan and Iraq is that neither of them shared one of the world’s longest land borders with the US. Trying to defeat an insurgency that can, whenever the fuck they want, strike at any part of your country, would be functionally impossible. That’s really the one part of We Stand on Guard that Brian K Vaughan got wrong. The real insurgents would be riding their pickups down to Austin and blowing up hospitals and schools.
Another twist is how familiar Canadians are with US geography, cities, culture, etc. not to mention being able to culturally camouflage with fairly little effort… as long as we don’t have to say “about”
America is also a conglomeration of 50 different states, with different climates, cultures, and accents. Not hard to just claim to be from Minnesota or something like that. Your average Texan won’t know the difference.
How about pipelines and substations? Ports? If they can snuggle a drone in they might even go for something like a refinery. Not sure how the security around oil wells looks but hitting a couple of those might also be worthwhile.
Sure, sowing abject terror is one thing but ideally you also want to make the occupation fiscally unsustainable. America has a bunch of very expensive locations that would fit that part of the equation nicely.
There are so many Canadians in the US or who have family there and visa versa that they could just have someone build a bomb in the US, no drome required. New england is 5-10% Canadian. Some fiesty snow birds could torch Mar A Lago. War with Canada would be a bad idea.
Oh, I thought of drones mainly because I expect refineries to be difficult enough to enter without authorization that you can’t just walk in and plop a backpack full of ANFO down next to a fractionating column. It’s more of a “park outside the fence and fly over with a few rotocopters so security won’t nab you before you get the bomb in place” thing.
Might not take out schools with kids, that’s uncool. More like poison water reservoirs, trash the electrical grid in 1000’s of places. Train track sabotage is also rather easy. There are so many places in the US where a sniper could do so much damage while staying securely under cover - think semi-remote highways, etc. And once we start playing with small drones in urban areas, there’s all sorts of creative damage we can cause.
History is littered with the graves of people who thought that Canadians wouldn’t do something “uncool.” And lets face it, poisoning water reservoirs and trashing the electrical grid are also going to hurt children.
I’m not advocating for any of this. I’m just predicting the inevitable if the US wants to take it that far.
I think the Lemmite up thread was referring to indiscriminate destruction of people. A complete genocide. An insurgency can’t exist if there’s no population for it to hide in.
With a few exceptions, we’ve kind of backed off on that for the last seventy years or so. I hope that we keep that up.
I believe that modern military cannot have a winning fight against guerilla warfare.
You cannot destroy what you cannot find.
Guerillas know the terrain and soldiers do not. The military intelligence might, but not the soldiers.
Guerillas know enemy soldiers locations first buy mere observation.
Guerilla fighters are a cornered animal. They have one way out, through the invader.
Edit: the only way that a modern military can fight it, is blanket indiscriminate destruction.
Basically, yes. Military theorists have been talking about this for a while. The lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq really demonstrated that it takes a remarkably small percentage of population being actively willing to fight against you in order to make it functionally impossible to pacify a region.
And the thing about Afghanistan and Iraq is that neither of them shared one of the world’s longest land borders with the US. Trying to defeat an insurgency that can, whenever the fuck they want, strike at any part of your country, would be functionally impossible. That’s really the one part of We Stand on Guard that Brian K Vaughan got wrong. The real insurgents would be riding their pickups down to Austin and blowing up hospitals and schools.
Another twist is how familiar Canadians are with US geography, cities, culture, etc. not to mention being able to culturally camouflage with fairly little effort… as long as we don’t have to say “about”
America is also a conglomeration of 50 different states, with different climates, cultures, and accents. Not hard to just claim to be from Minnesota or something like that. Your average Texan won’t know the difference.
Same could be said for most northern border states, Wisconsin people can sound pretty Canadian at times
New England is like 5+% Canadian. Vermont is like 10% (not that there is much important to the US in Vermont)
Like half the syrup comes from Vermont, the rest from Maine, then New York, NH and Mass. Northern New England is IMPORTANT
Just talk loudly and non stop and you will go undetected down south.
How about pipelines and substations? Ports? If they can snuggle a drone in they might even go for something like a refinery. Not sure how the security around oil wells looks but hitting a couple of those might also be worthwhile.
Sure, sowing abject terror is one thing but ideally you also want to make the occupation fiscally unsustainable. America has a bunch of very expensive locations that would fit that part of the equation nicely.
Or rent a house and pump poison into the water supply.
Or contaminate a food supply with salmonella.
Or roll the children in glass so the Republicans get cut up when they try to rape them.
Or spread rumors that all that is happening.
It just has to be so expensive that protecting everything bankrupts them.
There are so many Canadians in the US or who have family there and visa versa that they could just have someone build a bomb in the US, no drome required. New england is 5-10% Canadian. Some fiesty snow birds could torch Mar A Lago. War with Canada would be a bad idea.
Oh, I thought of drones mainly because I expect refineries to be difficult enough to enter without authorization that you can’t just walk in and plop a backpack full of ANFO down next to a fractionating column. It’s more of a “park outside the fence and fly over with a few rotocopters so security won’t nab you before you get the bomb in place” thing.
Might not take out schools with kids, that’s uncool. More like poison water reservoirs, trash the electrical grid in 1000’s of places. Train track sabotage is also rather easy. There are so many places in the US where a sniper could do so much damage while staying securely under cover - think semi-remote highways, etc. And once we start playing with small drones in urban areas, there’s all sorts of creative damage we can cause.
History is littered with the graves of people who thought that Canadians wouldn’t do something “uncool.” And lets face it, poisoning water reservoirs and trashing the electrical grid are also going to hurt children.
I’m not advocating for any of this. I’m just predicting the inevitable if the US wants to take it that far.
They wouldn’t even notice if someone did take out a school. They don’t care when it happens now.
Even that doesn’t work, as shown by the fact that hamas still exists even though nearly every structure in Gaza doesn’t.
I think the Lemmite up thread was referring to indiscriminate destruction of people. A complete genocide. An insurgency can’t exist if there’s no population for it to hide in.
With a few exceptions, we’ve kind of backed off on that for the last seventy years or so. I hope that we keep that up.
They would have to genocide a lot of their own citizens due to dual citizenship and family relations.