Quote Originally Posted by tolsen View Post
Third, I've always found the assertion that insurgents often or normally win to be patently wrong because there are hundreds, probably thousands of insurgencies that were defeated at an early stage which simply aren't well known because they were defeated.


I tend to agree with this. Many proto-insurgencies get nipped in the bud before they can blossom. Because of this they tend to get mentioned in the histories only in passing.

Malaya,Palestine,Northern Ireland,Kenya,Oman,Iraq,Afghanistan,El Salvador

Additional Trivia: I might also add the Soviet agricultural collectivization campaign in the late 20's - early 30's. The soviets tried very hard to hide the level of violent resistance from the outside world (and soviet urban citizens) so many people don't know how extensive it was and its hard to get exact figures on the real death counts but it now appears to have met more violent resistance than was previously imagined. IIRC, I remember reading that the <i>internal</i> Soviet count of their own dead - NOT peasants, but just the soldiers, state security, and police killed by peasants - exceeded 10,000 during the course of the flare up ... and the Soviets almost always under-counted even in their own documents.
Bud nipping is the way to go. I believe that anytime the U.S. becomes involved in counterinsurgency, our policymakers have failed to do what they should have done.