Monday, February 20, 2012
Praxis: The Defense of Farms in Rhodesia.
The incomparable Rawles gives us this article with many useful links: Could America's Farmers and Ranchers Face a Rhodesian Future? Read and learn. However, remember that individual homesteads can only delay organized looter bands. (See previous Sipsey Street posts on 18th century frontier "stations" here and here.) To break the back of organized looters you must have an organized and capable ready reserve to track them down and destroy them and/or track them to their own home fortifications and destroy them at the source. That is the lesson of late 18th Century Tennessee settlers.
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7 comments:
Excellent info!
Hell Mike the ranchers along the border are already under siege. The only problem is our government refuses to let them effectively deal with the "Terrs" instead turning a blind eye towards the problem with only token effort. And the Ranchers, populace, and lowly agents in the field continue to pay the price.
Pamwe Chete!
What happened in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe has now also turned into a full-blown genocide on white farmers in South Africa. Close to 4,000 killed on their farms by looters since 2001.
Never think it cannot happen over here on our Southern borders either.
I quite agree that these problems are easily dealt with when the threat/s are eliminated permanently. This is the preferred method used the world over throughout history. If it isn't used, the problems continue until it is.
The only problem that could preempt these actions would be if attacking forces were to be joined or supported by other forces like say, government forces... Creating the situation of protected predation, pay for by the funds and property of the predated...
Sounds eerily familiar...
Rhodesian farmers did have local defense forces and mutual aid agreements with neighbors. They were pretty effective, but all that static defense/offense-stuff ended in 1983 with surrender to the Soviet-backed AfriCom Terr's. Turn those R-1's in and prepare for "peace and prosperity with President Bob Mugabe". Yeah, right.
Your point is an important one: fortifications don't work in an age of explosives and Cat D-9's. Delay only, and delay at best.
Only a superior mobile counter-force that can destroy the OpFor is an acceptable defense. Of course, artillery, skillfully applied from inside the compound, or circling drones with automated seek-n-destroy could assist the rapid-reaction force coming to your rescue.
@ DH - regarding the borderlands:
Col. Chalres Askins was by almos all accounts a macho Texas Ranger who was also a borderline sociopath who took as much delight in shooting bad guys as he did in big game hunting. He was once asked how many men he had killed, and answered 27 that he knew of, but that did not include the Germans ( war time) , Mexicans or mixed-breeds, of whom there were more. He admitted that he might have been a psychopath, and in today's OC climate, the families of the drug lords and smugglers he killed would all be suing the government and lining up to have their asses kissed repeatedly by Holder, Clinton and the top dogs at the Border Patrol.
But in his time, his area of the border emained fairly quiet becuase he had a reputation, as did many Rangers, that you do NOT screw with them unless you want to die. There was no delusion that 'maybe you could be the lucky one that made it" No. If you wntered his turf, you died. Simple and primal.
A few men like that might make a difference today, whether or borders or guarding perimeters of landholdings.
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