FM3-24 and FM90-8

[Tom Odom]

Tom, I think you are right about the focus on the "counter" part (counter-guerrilla and COIN), but I have to wonder about it from the other side. It strikes me that, at the operational level for he guerrillas / insurgents (I'll admit to preferring the term "Grand Tactical" but that's from doing too much gaming in the Napoleonic era), don't the differences disappear?

Marc,

I am with you on that one, especially in the modern (post-WWII) sense. Guerrilla operations ala WWII were against German occupation and one really gets into counting angels on the head of a pin when you try and distinguish the difference guerrillas and insurgents. The best I can do is distinguish on the basis of who is actually tied to the local population. I guess if I had to point to a post-WWII "guerrilla" it would have to be Che Guevera and he failed everywhere he went. A second could be Holden Roberto whom we stupidly sponsored on his attempt to take Angola--since he was Uncle Mo's cousin and had the vaunted Farce Armees Zairiose backing.

Best

Tom

[BRUZ_LEE]

one really gets into counting angels on the head of a pin when you try and distinguish the difference guerrillas and insurgents.

I still see a clear difference (as posted above): a guerrilla is always a fighter while an insurgent is a more overall term which can be a fighter or not (he may be a pure politician, a bomb-maker, a journalist who writes articles on the Internet, a webmaster, a photographer/cameraman, a computer expert, ...)
So in my opinion you're talking about a guerrilla and an insurgent fighter.

Che Guevera ...he failed everywhere he went.

He obviously didn't fail in Cuba.
He failed later on in Africa and South America because he focussed on Guerrilla TTPs (in his book he also mainly writes about pure tactical stuff) while he failed to notice the absence of a political situation that favours an insurgency.

BRUZ