Re: Communication and Travel

At 03:28 PM 6/14/98 +0000, you wrote:
>Keep most of your forces in orbit with those on the ground quickly 
>reinforcable and with almost instant ortillery support.

The whole trick of being an army of occupation is scaleable response.
Ortillery is not.  If you pull into orbit with your uberbattlewagon and
threaten to nuke the civvies, they will surrender.  

Great.	Okay.  Now what?

Well, obviously you wanted this planet for a reason.  Presumably, it was
so
you could force the populous to work for you.  What sort of scaleable
response can you get out of ortillery when the whole planet calls in
sick?
"I'm sorry we can't meet the production quotas El Supremo, but we've got
a
nasty case of the flu going around down here.  Cough, cough."

;)

So you send a bunch of guys with guns down.  Not so much to shoot
people,
but to grab them by the scruff of the neck and shove them into line. 
Most
humans (unfortunately) respond well to intimidation.  They may fume
about
it in the safety of their homes, might even curse the invaders at a
local
pub with a few stiff drinks in them, but by and large very few will
actively resist without an example, a leader or a lot of assurance that
it
is safe.

Well, one of these mornings, as your goons are going down the street
rounding up workers, a sniper is gonna open up on them or a kid with a
grenade is gonna run up to them or your nice pretty grav tank is gonna
catch a homemade satchel charge or a guy is going to drive a truck load
of
explosives into your troops' barracks.

Boom.  It's over.  Okay, where is your ortillery now?  And would you do
with it if you could?  You can't take out an entire city block (and you
troops with it) to kill a sniper or kid or a carbomber or housewife with
a
satchel charge.

>Bring your whorehouse with you and keep it in orbit. 
>or, be like the saudi example, don't base your troops near enough 
>whorehouses that they wil visit them.

Sensible.  There a Hammer's Slammers story where they do this (more or
less).

>Also, if you take anything other than very infequent stabbings and 
>killings while on local r&r, even the most hormone driven squaddies 
>won't go there any more. (or if they do, it will be with a
flamethrower).

It wasn't the fault of the working girls.  It was a random attack
(possibly
even an opportunity hit) by the resistance.  Toast the whorehouse and
the
resistance will get a whole batch of new recruits by nightfall due to
the
outrage.  The trick is telling the good civilians from the bad ones.

>If the civil/guerilla disobedience is so bad that the planet is an 
>overall liability, *and* if the political climate allows it, you kill 
>or drive off everyone and resettle. Perhaps a bit unrealistic, 
>I'll admit, but hey, look at ethnic cleansing today.

That "political climate" qualifier is the trick.  Given a domestic
goverment anywhere to the left of Vlad the Impaler, this is a quick way
to
get the local Commandante reassigned.

Given a bipolar balance of galactic power, this a good way to experience
the adage "what goes around comes around."  So, what?  There are no
friendly planets elsewhere occupied by the enemy?  And think of how they
can use it to whip up the folks back home.  Atrocities have a way of
ending
apathy about a conflict.

Given a non-bipolar galactic political situation, such actions are more
likely to bring in neutral powers on the side of the enemy.  

Besides, the logistics of exterminating an entire population really are
formidable.  (As the Nazis discovered.)  Replacing them with your people
make it doubly so.

Jeff