let's talk about military strategy and the fact that the MLPS mayor made the decision to abandon the 3rd precinct

there is a school of military strategy that views engagements as a battle of wills between the commands, i.e. that you don't actually have to route their forces so

much as you have to convince the enemy commander that the engagement is unwinnable and therefore that they need to retreat

in the case of the 3rd precinct, the police absolutely had the military might to take back it back. even if the police in the immediate area were low on

supplies, it would have been nearly trivial, from a tactical and military force perspective, to bring in a couple SWAT or riot control squads and blast the precinct clear.

what happened is that one of the many authorities over those forces decided that the potential collateral

of this use of force would cause more adverse effects for him than ceding the precinct.

the protesters did not have the capacity to go toe to toe with the full might of the police force (and i'm frustrated with the many tweets i see claiming they did) but they didn't NEED it

because taking the strategic objective only actually required showing enough force to convince leadership that they were powerful enough to cause problems if they stopped it.

we need to continue to improve our tactical and strategic thinking, and that requires understanding what

conditions ACTUALLY lead to the victory (and it wasn't that the protesters could overpower the full might of the MLPS police)

the important implication is that we can actually win important strategic victories by choosing our targets and how to demonstrate shows of force that

intimidate leadership structures and cause them to fold.

if we pick the right targets & we properly concentrate shows of force, we don't actually have to physically crush the cops or military to stage domestic insurgency in the US. we need only tie of the hands of commanders.

sure, the US military can drone strike a protest and eliminate it immediately. if they did that, the level of reaction would far outweigh the strategic value of doing so. there's only so much you can massacre civilians without reaction. we don't have to win in an even fight, we

just have to start understanding how we properly intimidate leadership, and what strategic objectives and tactics will accomplish that, and deploy forces accordingly.

we can do this y'all. let's just understand how it gets done.