Guerilla wars (or continuance of armed conflict in other ways)

Although in general I agree with John's 
comments about outside support, I will point 
out that this is not necessarily always the case. 

It is quite conceivable that, knowing you have an 
enemy potentially about to occupy your planet, 
you plant plenty of arms caches around. You 
then distribute some of your population around 
the rougher regions. Bits of your fleet goes to 
ground on the ocean bottoms, in hidden cave 
silos, on your gas giant, etc. Hidden comsats 
are emplaced as asteroids, etc. 

Now, this forms the basis for a guerilla war. This 
presumes that 1) your enemy doesn't want to 
cook the planet (then there isn't much you can 
do) and 2) you have a finite time until you run 
out of rebels, arms, and support. You may have 
support from in-system forces that make a 
great effort to remain hidden. You may have a 
chance at pulling this off due to the difficulty of 
garrisoning an entire planet. If you have 
support from the remaining off-Earth colonies 
(you might call this outside support, I'd actually 
call it inside support since really it is part of the 
same force that is waging the guerilla war, 
rather than a separate entity), then that's a 
good plus. 

In general, it is very hard for a guerilla or 
revolutionary movement to work without 
outside funding and arms. However, there are 
some situations where a limited duration 
guerilla struggle are more than feasible (witness 
Alan's suggestion on how the OUDF might best 
oppose the KV and how OUDF training involves 
this as a core philosophy). 

This requires preparation, and an effective 
enemy with enough willingness to stick it out will 
probably overcome these strategems 
eventually. But in the meanwhile, it can get very 
costly for him. 

And I think if Earth was captured, if it wasn't 
utterly reduced, it would still be a key planet to 
recover (partly due to the psychological impact, 
partly due to the population on Earth, and 
partly due to the manufacturing plants, 
universities, etc on Earth that are worth saving). 

Now, if the KV have Humanicide in mind, then 
the UNSC better keep them the heck away from 
Earth. Failing that, they must write their final will 
and testament.... 

Oh, and John, in case you hadn't noticed: 
Modern Day Japan has an awful lot of very 
reasonable and democratic people who put a 
very high value on human life. There are 
undoubtedly small vestiges of the attitude of 
"the old days", but they are nowhere near as 
prevalent as one might fear. The average salary-
man is concerned with family stress, work 
stress, and trying to make a living in a reeling 
economy. Manifest Destiny or Global Hegemony 
are well outside the common consciousness 
today. I'd bet there are many Japanese that 
place a higher value on human life (any human 
life, not just a Japanese one) than a lot of 
people elsewhere. They've had a real close 
acquaintance with the results of that philosophy. 
And besides, most kids nowadays in Japan are 
interested in material goodies rather than 
philosophy. Globalization, the ubiquity of 
English, the Internet, etc. are all having their 
effect....

Tomb 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304