..... Or in the case of the Japanese...they did not invade the U.S. mainland in part because of our population being well armed. Something about "You cannot invade America. You will find a rifle barrel behind every blade of grass"
There is alot of truth behind that quote. I know people don't like it when I use this example but look what happned to the US Rangers in Somolia in the 90's. Have you ever seen that movie "blackhawk Down"? The worlds finest infantry, the Army Rangers, got their @$$es handed to them by a heavily armed town. The US government has not sent any troops back since then for anything.... Any one want to guess why?
You forgot to mention the previous U.S. Embassy bombings, politically, the U.S. had suffered plenty abroad. Somalia was just the last nail in the coffin for a U.S. pull out in the region. The operation that Black Hawk Down takes place in was supposed to be a quick mission and dare I say "easy". It went horribly wrong, we were under armed for what we ended up facing. We were not expecting what we encountered. [censored] handed to us? I think not, one chopper was taken down, 18 Rangers lost their lives. How many Somalis died? Hundreds.
P.S. We have gone back. AFRICOM, Camp Lemonier, etc.
True we have gone "back", but never attempted anything like blackhawk down again. The part you said about "things going horribly wrong" and "what we ended up facing" is exactly what I am talking about. Armed civilians took out 18 Rangers and spoiled a military operation, forcing them to retreat. Now consider that these were rangers with advanced weapons, training and equipment, not some barely trained national guard unit with half functioning equipment.
Call it what you will but we learned a hard lesson that day. Armed communities are a forbidable opponent to any opposing force, including a high level military unit.