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Old 09-11-2014, 09:43 PM
 
Location: West of Louisiana, East of New Mexico
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Guerillas are perfect for fighting defensive wars. Their goal is typically to hold onto land as opposed to acquiring and encroaching on other territory. It's like the boxing "Rope-A-Dope" strategy.

 
Old 09-11-2014, 09:46 PM
 
48,505 posts, read 96,653,685 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Catdancer View Post
Guerrilla warfare is why we failed in Vietnam, why we failed in Korea, why we are failing in Afghanistan and why we will fail in any county where the natives don't want us there. Not only can these forces hit quickly and unexpectedly but they can disappear just as fast. The biggest problem when dealing with guerrilla fighters is that you never really know who your enemy might be.

WW II, the underground movement in every country that Germany occupied came back to bite them in the a$$. Japan had the Filipinos on their butts and like somebody said, without using guerrilla tactics, it's doubtful that America would have ever won it's independence. Guerrilla forces may not often win wars outright but they can sure as hell keep the other side from winning.
Non-sense. The Viet Cong where pretty much wiped out. It took North Vietnamese regulars to win the war. The problem was that we didn'td do all out sustained bombing of the north for political reasons. Never wanted to win just like Korea. We got a cease fire in Korea so never loss that war.It was pretty much a draw and S. Korea is now a economic power house compared to north run by a wacko.
 
Old 09-11-2014, 09:54 PM
 
3,244 posts, read 5,228,079 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Catdancer View Post
WW II, the underground movement in every country that Germany occupied came back to bite them in the a$$. Japan had the Filipinos on their butts
Do you really think that either was defeated by insurgent warfare? The Allies had to invade & destroy Germany to defeat it. The US had to drop the A-bomb on Japan to force surrender.
Quote:
Guerrilla forces may not often win wars outright but they can sure as hell keep the other side from winning.
I'll agree with you on this.
 
Old 09-11-2014, 10:35 PM
 
Location: Eugene, Oregon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by volosong View Post
Has there ever been an "army" throughout history that was not eventually victorious while employing hit-and-run gorilla tactics?

I'm thinking that the American Revolution War was 'won' by the army that for the most part employed such tactics. Then the Vietnam experience. Now, there are conflicts in the middle east where the combatants are difficult to identify from the civilian population. Do gorilla armies eventually prevail?

I guess some of the Imperial Roman armies defeated their adversaries, but I can't think of any other examples.
I doubt it. Science fiction films notwithstanding, gorillas' hands aren't that well suited to handling basic weaponry, to say nothing of non-tactical equipment that may require more delicate adjustments or the entry of codes into keypads.
 
Old 09-11-2014, 10:58 PM
 
Location: Down the rabbit hole
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bigjake54 View Post
Do you really think that either was defeated by insurgent warfare? The Allies had to invade & destroy Germany to defeat it. The US had to drop the A-bomb on Japan to force surrender.

I'll agree with you on this.
No, absolutely not but in many of those European countries the underground did tie up Axis troops, sabotage factories and transportation lines and aid downed pilots and escaped POWs. In countries like Denmark, they also aided in getting the Jews out of the country before the Germans could round them up for concentration camps. That's one of the things guerrillas do best, harass the enemy and make them divide resources.

........and to clarify an earlier statement - I did not mean to say that Korea was a guerrilla war (even though it could be argued that it started as one) but that there was guerrilla fighting on both sides that posed the usual problems.:
Korean War Educator: Branch Accounts - Marines - Pohang Guerrilla Hunt

Korean War (1950-53) :: Battling over POWs -- Encyclopedia Britannica

FSI | SPICE - Overview of the Korean War and its Legacy
 
Old 09-11-2014, 11:04 PM
 
Location: Broomfield, Colorado
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You're rarely going to find a guerrilla movement which ever accomplished anything on their own.
Look at some of the "successful" ones....

Viet Minh, Vietnam: Had more or less transformed into a standing army and were no longer a guerilla force by the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Relied heavily on supplies from the Bloc and China.
Viet Cong, Vietnam: Wiped out to the point where command was seized by the NVA, and they lost all autonomy. NVA came in to close against a demoralized ARVN force once the US and SEATO withdrew their forces.
Irish Republican Army, Ireland: Reliant largely on funding from overseas (namely, Irish Americans living in the US). Success was ultimately due to a failure on the part of British intelligence in not realizing that the IRA was damn near wiped out after their failed attack on the Customs House. Topping it off, a war-weary British public, still recovering from the First World War, had little to no interest in an all-out military campaign in Ireland. After the treaty, the pro-treaty Irish Army defeated the anti-treaty faction of the IRA in the ensuing civil war.
Boers, South Africa: Succeeded in repelling the British the first time, due to their intimacy with the terrain and advanced (for the time) Mauser rifles supplied by Spain. British regrouped, revamped their forces and equipment, kicked the Boers' collective asses in the second go-around.
ZANU-PF, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe: Heavily reliant on materiel from the Bloc and China against a minority populace which had been isolated by the remainder of the world. Suffered severe losses. Rhodesians never had adequate personnel to really contain the much more numerous ZANU-PF.
26th of July Movement, Cuba: Let's be real... Batista's forces were absolute crap. Any halfway competent military would've kicked these clowns' collective asses all over the Caribbean.
MPLA et. al, Angola: Supported by both sides of the Iron Curtain against Portugal, whose only support was from South Africa (themselves a bit bogged down with their own affairs). Did not actually win militarily, but won by default after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal established an anti-colonial government which automatically ceded independence to Portugal's colonial possessions.
ELF, Eritrea: First off, it took the 30 years to gain independence, and we're not talking about from some world superpower - it was from Ethiopia. They also relied on support from much of the Arab world, as well as China and the United States.

I'm not going to carry on all night listing every example, but you should get the gist of it by now. They don't do it on their own, plain and simple.
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