SWC member and all-around good-guy from Chicago posts over on his Zenpundit blog - Hezbollah and the Ghost of Giap.

Colonel W. Pat Lang , making an observation about Israel's war in Lebanon with both immediate as well as historical implications.

"The Lebanese Hizbullah "Arab Guerrilla Army" is something different. What Newsweek describes is a force in transition, a force becoming a real army. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote in "People's War, People's Army" that a national resistance movement's armed force must "evolve" from political agitprop activities to guerrilla war and eventually to the status and capability of regular armed forces if it is to succeed in defeating its enemies and seizing " a place at the table" in its country's future."

The interesting thing about this observation is that, while Giap is a military leader of the first rank, his theory of guerilla warfare has rarely been borne out by history, including that of the Vietnam War. It is exceptionally rare for irregulars or guerillas to " transition" or "evolve" into full-fledged conventional military operations against a modern, first-rate opponent. Generally, guerilla forces beat state opponents by becoming more effective at guerilla warfare and causing a psychological and moral collapse of the state's will to resist; and only after seizing power, do the new rulers transform their guerilla fighters into professional soldiers...
Much more - read the whole thing...