Lisa's mind, assaulted by cannabis, could not think of a common thread. She shook her head.
"In all three of these wars," he told her, "an enemy that was better equipped, in better numbers, and that was absolutely sure of victory, invaded a smaller country expecting the conflict to be over in a matter of weeks with their unconditional victory. And in all three cases the under-equipped, undertrained, understaffed inhabitants of those lands defeated those enemies. Soundly defeated them."
"I'm not sure I'm following you," she said, although she was starting to get a glimmer.
"In all three of these cases the enemy — the Russians in Afghanistan, the French and the Americans in Vietnam, and the British in the revolutionary war — were invading unfamiliar terrain at the end of long supply lines. They were fighting an enemy on their home ground, an enemy that was committed to not being pacified, an enemy that was fighting for independence from a superior power, an enemy that had something to fight for. In each case the invaders did not really care for the task that they were embarked upon. They had no passion for the battle. They only wanted to get the job done and get out of what they considered to be a shithole. What do all of the Earthlings call this place?"
"A shithole," Lisa replied. "Or worse."
"Do you think any of the WestHem marines are going to want to die for this place? To give their life to return Mars to the WestHem corporations? Because no matter what kind of bullshit the WestHem ruling council slings via the media, anyone with any intelligence on that planet is going to know what the real reason for the war is. That includes the marines. When they start seeing their friends die, when they realize that this war is not a cakewalk, their morale is going to go down the shitter. Troops with poor morale are the perfect setting for defeat."
"So you think we can defeat them?" she asked. "Drive them off this planet with poor morale? Even though they'll have five times the equipment that we do?"
Brian pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one with a laser lighter. He drew deeply, exhaling a plume of smoke into the air. "I've been thinking about this a lot lately," he told his partner, his friend. "It goes back to those three wars. Now General Jackson hasn't confided his plans in me or anything, but I can make a few guesses as to what he's going to do. Do you know what the major factor in the victory of those three wars was?"
"Home ground?" she ventured.
He nodded. "Exactly. The victors were on their home ground. They knew every nook and cranny of the battlefields. And they all made extensive use of guerrilla warfare. They were all under-equipped forces, with inferior weaponry. They rarely, if ever, hit the enemy head on. What they did was pick at them, piece by piece in their own rear areas. A few squads of harassment troops here and there, squads whose job was to pick off soldiers one by one, when they were least expecting it. The concept is simple. Never give your enemy a place where he can feel safe. Even in their own heavily guarded encampments they were hit by snipers, or mortar fire, or rockets. They made the enemy feel that as long as they were anywhere in those godforsaken places that they were in peril, that they could be killed without warning at any time.
"I believe General Jackson is going to employ a lot of special forces teams whose job it will be to do just that. To go out into the wastelands, to their very landing sites, and pick at them. To position themselves along the march and hit their tanks and APCs with lasers. To knock them off one by one and to degrade their morale."
"And that can win the war?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "Although in all of the above cases it was a long, protracted process that cost a lot of the defenders their lives. They all took horrible casualties doing this. It took years in every case. With the Vietnamese it took nearly a generation. But they all achieved their goals in the end."
"So you're saying we're going to have to fight them for years?" she asked, depressed at the thought.
"Well," he said, "there's a basic difference between them and us."
"What's that?"
"The Americans, the Vietnamese, and the Afghans were all under-equipped and poorly trained forces. We, on the other hand, though numerically inferior, have the same equipment that the WestHems have. In fact, we have equipment specifically designed for use on Mars, something WestHem lacks. We also have training that's better than the WestHems."
"So how does that fit the equation?"
He smiled. "I think that WestHem is in for a big surprise when they come over here. A shocking surprise. In any case, to answer your question, this war is far from hopeless. I think we're gonna kick some Earthling ass."
All over the planet people did as Laura Whiting had instructed. They talked to each other. They discussed the question. In some cases there were arguments. In some cases the arguments were violent. In a few they were deadly.
In Libby a man shot his wife to death when she refused to change her mind on how she was going to vote.
In Procter two street gang members shot another when he told them that he was going to vote no and they disagreed with his choice.
On Triad there was another violent voting argument between gang members. Shots were fired in the heat of the disagreement and two were killed.
There were other episodes of violence during the period between Laura Whiting's speech and the vote itself. In the industrial city of Dow, for instance, the regional manager of MarsTrans corporation headed for his office as he usually did the morning after Laura Whiting's speech. His wife, a high society Earthling who hated her husband's assignment on Mars, protested, warning him that it wasn't safe but he scoffed at her and headed out of the two hundred and eighth floor apartment, intending to take a first class tram downtown and begin calling each of his managerial staff and ordering them to come in. Where did that Martian bitch Whiting get off declaring a work holiday anyway? He was going to show those greenies a thing or two about playing hardball. He made it less than a block from the front of his apartment before an angry group of middle-class Martians, many of them employees of MarsTrans, attacked him and beat him to death.
But for the most part the presence of the MPG on the streets kept the planet in order. In every city roving patrols on foot and in clanking APCs took up positions on major street intersections and augmented the police force. The actual incidents of street crime — already at an all-time low — took an additional dive.
The cities of Mars were confined to the Western Hemisphere of the planet and stretched across only nine of the twenty-four Martian time zones. The prime meridian for the planet ran through New Pittsburgh, the first of the Martian cities. The furthest city to the east was Dow, a mining city in the northern latitudes with a population of five million. Dow was three hours ahead of the prime meridian. It was here that the polls first opened on the morning of the vote; at 0800 Dow time, 0500 New Pittsburgh time.
Voting was accomplished by calling up the ballot program on an Internet screen. The main computer that controlled it was in the capital building in New Pittsburgh. The computer had been instructed to allow only those people who were Martian citizens to vote. It obtained a list of these people from the census computer and downloaded their names, social security numbers, and fingerprint information. The voters would identify themselves by placing their right index finger on the pad of the screen they were using.
Once the terminal sent the identification information to the main voting computer and the main voting computer was satisfied that that person was a Martian citizen of voting age that had not already voted once, the ballot was sent. In this case the ballot had a single issue on it that required either a yes or a no vote. When the voter made his or her decision it was sent back to the main computer and logged.