>
> Only a small minority of guerilla wars have been successful; Malaya
and
> the Philippines (both times) are rather more typical than was either
> Vietnam or Cuba. And as Chomsky has pointed out, Vietnam was damaged
You must put things in the proper geo-political context. Vietcong could successfully wage a prolonged campaign of sufficient intensity to deny the US control of the land because it could receive substantial outside help. Ditto for Afghanistan and Russia. In the Philippine case, by contrast, this would be very difficult.
It could be thus said that a guerilla army can be successful - meaning sufficiently engage the enemy force to deny them the full control of the land - if and only if it is a proxy army of larger power (China and Russia in Vietnam, US and Saudi Arabia in Afghanistan). Otherwise guerillas are but a relatively minor nuisance - they may harass the enemy but they cannot threaten its control of the territorial-political unit in question.
>From that standpoint - Iraq is neither Vietnam/Afghanistan nor the
Philippines - its guerillas certainly get outside support but not nearly
as much as Vietcong did. And it does not seem that such a foreign help
is on its way. No Middle Eastern/Islamic state is in a position to defy
the US and provide such assistance even if some elements would want to
in their dreams. Russia could afford it, and probably some of its
ruling class elements would want to get even with the US for Afghanistan
- but this time Russians are on the same side of the fence as the US -
both threatened by Islamic fundamentalism. And there is no one else
even remotely willing to fight a proxy war with the US in Iraq.
So absent foreign assistance, Iraqi insurgents will be more of a nuisance than a serious military threat to the US control there, but - and that is a big but - even in that role they can do enough damage (sabotage oil export!) to destabilize the region and hurt the US through higher oil prices.
Wojtek