Invaded by a foreign power..

what do you do ? surrender peacefully ? Run ? (where?), fight a conventional war.

insurgency is a combination of both....

Throughout history, insurgencies have learned from the mistakes of their past, whereas foreign armies haven't. (Large foreign armies).Granted, the insurgency in vietnam was quelled with a large presence, and maybe people did learn something. But then we have this quagmire called Iraq. where lessons learnt through blood and time were seemingly thrown out the window.

Ok, So the way I see it, an insurgency is best aided by these things.

Dispersal of Arms- Can't fight an army on conventional grounds ?, spread weapons around, keep dotted and secret arms caches. Keep seperate from a bureaucracy. De centralize command and control.

Incite the populace-make it appear as if you are the good guys, like David vs Goliath etc.

spread it around- get to other countries, get support from them etc.


Now, the reason I posted this here, is other than sucessful examples of counter insurgency in Latin America, and insurgency in Iraq, Are there examples in history (stalingrad ?, iraq in the 1920s ?) that prove that insurgencies have learnt, whilst foreign armies haven't.

I apologize if there are any historical/factual innacuracies in this post, etc.

The insurgency in Iraq has one thing going for it that most others don't - a willingness of a sufficient number of people to be suicide bombers.

and a great dental plan

Now, the reason I posted this here, is other than sucessful examples of counter insurgency in Latin America, and insurgency in Iraq, Are there examples in history (stalingrad ?, iraq in the 1920s ?) that prove that insurgencies have learnt, whilst foreign armies haven't.
It isn't so much that insugencies have learned, but that each one is different, and historically the counterinsurgents have usually not been able to understand their political/cultural underpinnings enough to successfully undermine them in the eyes of the public that provides them with a support base.

To use Iraq as an example, the US diagnosed the war incorrectly the first time around. We were treating it like Vietnam, which was ultimately a competition between competing ideologies for the support of the population, versus the current war which is ethnic and sectarian in nature.

Dr. Stephen Biddle, a widely respected strategist at the war college, has a good (albeit long) interview on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO9nyPwUfTQ

And of course it is worth plugging the Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual here, in all of its 14mb PDF glory: http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf