[Airbornelawyer]

Originally posted by CRad

My study group also said General Washington and others in the Revolutionary War couldn't be considered insurgents. Not even Roger's Rangers in spite of their tactics.

Originally posted by CRad
Why would the revolutionaries be insurgents rather than revolutionists. They weren't trying to change England; they were trying to break off from it.

Separatist insurgencies are still insurgencies. Most start off attempting to change the political order peacefully from within, but chose to break off, often violently, when they feel there is no other choice. This was true in 1775 and 1861.

In the case of the American Revolution, the move from change from within to separatism was relatively rapid. Compare the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress of October 14, 1774 to the Declaration Of The Causes And Necessity Of Taking Up Arms of July 6, 1775, and to the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776.

The quoted definition of insurgent forces is too limited. Broadening the definition of terrorism to include street crime and broadening the definition of insurgency to include non-violent political protest is too, well..., broad. Similarly, narrowing the definition of insurgency to effectively make it synonymous with guerrilla warfare or UW is too... narrow. Insurgency is not defined simply by its tactics.

As Mao noted in On Protracted War, guerrilla warfare is just one of the tactics chosen by the revolutionary movement, and depending on the stage of the revolution, the state of one's own forces and the state of the enemy, guerrilla warfare isn't even necessarily the best tactic. The mobile warfare he spoke of in those essays would be perfectly understood by Washington. To use Mao's terminology, mobile warfare, guerrilla warfare and even positional warfare play their roles depending on the situation, and work together to defeat the enemy.

In the Peninsular War (1808-1814), the key to victory was Wellington's war of maneuver, but this was made possible by the Spanish guerrillas. There were 300,000 French troops in Spain by 1810-11, but they were never able to get more than 70,000 in a single battle against the British and Portuguese combined army because of the guerrillas.

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned Mao, Marulanda, Begin (Against the Brits), Castro (Che wasn't the leader in Cuba), Bolivar, Marti, Lenin, Khomeini (against the Shah), Collins, etc.

We were just trying not to be too obvious.

To rehash Che, he would actually go on my list of worst insurgent leaders. It seems like left to his own devices, without Fidel, he was a colossal failure - in the Congo, Bolivia and elsewhere. He would be up there with another failure, Emilio Aguinaldo, who had potential and some skills, but whose talents were outweighed by his flaws.

Regards,
Dave