Dear Readers,
I am extremely excited to have found in the DontComply community a very big tent, with room for all kinds of political, social, religious and other activist views and topics. Having found my home in the more “tacticool” side of the house, I have greatly enjoyed keeping you abreast of the goings-on in my small corner of the militia movement as I see it, and very much appreciate the positive response from everyone on my militia articles.
But reading and doing are two different things. In CTM, we believe everyone belongs in the Unorganized Militia, which we understand to be the entire body of a free people, and a natural duty of citizenship, although we realize the word militia sounds scary to some, quaint and toothless to others. For those hesitant to reach out for either reason, this letter is an open invitation to anyone interested in taking up the profession of arms in a volunteer citizens’ militia, with an explanation of what we do and why.
Thank you for your support, and don’t hesitate to ask questions!
-Your Friend, AJK
So, you may have at some point in your life considered volunteering for service in a militia, but like many of us, were apprehensive about reaching out. You notionally like the “idea” of militia, of being part of a tactical group of citizens outside the jurisdiction of government, but have (wisely) asked yourself, “how can a group like this possibly stack up against an invading force?”
[adinserter block=”3″]It’s true, as a small, single-Company unit we don’t pose much of a direct threat to the Imperial Stormtroopers, the Cartel or the Zombie Horde. It’s also true that our association with the militia movement at large has gained us somewhat of a “redneck gun club” reputation, which is not entirely undeserved. A typical CTM training can muster as many as twenty volunteers, or as few as three or four, all of whom are expected to arm and equip themselves, which sometimes results in a rainbow of different uniforms, weapon systems and arrangements of gear, and while we have standardized the configuration of our uniforms, we don’t mandate that a member even own a set of multicam fatigues until he commits to patching in with us. These volunteers are also average citizens with normal jobs and lives, who come to our unit with experience levels ranging from zero to special operations, and everything in between.
But no matter how good we make ourselves look, the militia is rightly or not associated with rag-tag amateurism, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. While a group like ours wouldn’t stand much of a chance toe-to-toe against a conventional force that boasts limitless resources, we can prevail against it by leveraging the natural advantages of our small size: formlessness and adaptability. Toward that end, two often-asked questions deserve to be addressed: (a). how would one fight a conventional enemy, and (b). why bother learning their tactics if we can’t win?
The short answer is, you don’t “fight” your enemy – and if you don’t get in a fight you don’t have to win it.
That does NOT mean being a pacifist. Rather, “fighting” implies a decisive action, as in every bar brawl or schoolyard throwdown you have ever seen, ending with a victor and a vanquished. A fight implies honor, fairness and eventual resolution, as in a duel or boxing match. But those noble concepts of old are misplaced when set against the backdrop of a guerrilla resistance.
So instead of fighting our enemy, we harass him. We lie in ambush and, when a vulnerability is exposed, “poke the bear” and run away. Then we do it again, and again until the bear’s sense of security falters, its morale wavers, and it eventually descends into chaos. Let the enemy be the one to feel the hills have eyes, (which they do), and that a target is perpetually painted on his back, (which it is). To a militia unit, success is not measured in battlefield victory, but by the psychological damage done to the invading force.
The advantage of the smaller, less well-supplied unit is in formlessness, in being simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Where the enemy manifests a rock, we’ll become water; where he is a lion, we’ll become a swarm of biting flies. Where he rests he will find chaos, and where he strikes, he will find nothing. Simultaneously we watch how his tactics change in response to our prodding, and we counter-adapt in kind. In this way, despite his strength, the conventional enemy is slowly, systematically drained of his morale until it becomes too costly for him to continue his campaign. This is the philosophy we believe all militias should strive to adopt.
[adinserter block=”1″]As a CTM recruit, you would be given some light training in conventional tactics – not to use them, but to learn how to combat them. We “wedge it out,” for instance, to learn how to conduct surveillance, we road march to learn how to ambush, we set up patrol bases to learn how to recon, and we wear body armor to learn how to aim for the pelvic girdle. We run OPFOR missions to hone our skills and harden our hearts to the idea of a fair fight.
Use of these guerrilla style tactics in a conflict would of course make us appear to be the most ignoble bunch of bloodthirsty, heartless, opportunistic malefactors to haunt these backwoods of Texas since our beloved namesake, the Comanche. A conventional enemy would likely come to see us as cowardly; we see ourselves as a force of nature, slowly but steadily extracting the life’s blood and fighting spirit from the invaders. We choose this philosophy out of necessity, but that’s not to say we don’t like it that way.
So amateurs, yes, we are. But amateurish enough to adopt the conventions of an Infantry unit? Absolutely not. Like Survivor, we are there to “outwit, outplay, outlast,” rather than to merely “win.”
So if you have been hesitant to join, on that account, we hope this clarifies our guiding philosophy. We want recruits, but not the kind of recruits whose sense of honor is inexorably tied to their philosophy of combat. Join us, but don’t join thinking you’re signing up for the National Guard. We will support our community always, our government when it deserves it, and the principles of the Constitution unto death; but if and when that conflict comes to Texas, don’t look for us to be bounding across the objective. Only accept and embrace that the hills really do have eyes, and teeth as well should they be provoked.
By Anthony James Kidwell – DontComply.com