Quote Originally Posted by Sheogorath View Post
Well, maybe not ENTIRELY. The Americans DID have regulars...they just sucked :P
They didn't "suck", they were simply not as professional or well equipped as the British. Let's remember, many of the same soldiers who were "regulars" became "irregulars" eventually. It was many of the same men.

The fact was that guerilla warfare was so effective because strategically, it was what was called for in that warfare situation.

The colonists were against a numerically superior enemy, with better weaponry, more experience and training, highly motivated, etc. To engage the Brits using the same tactics the Brits used was simply trying to beat 10 with 2. It's not going to happen. Specifically in that time period's style of conventional warfare.

In all reality, the American irregulars were outstanding soldiers. They adapted and developed an irregular style that began to actually allow that 2 to beat 10. Once this occurred, the British failed to adapt to THIS...and started losing the war...and eventually did.

Where experience, training, weapons, tactics etc were major strengths for the British - knowledge of the land, hit and run tactics, communications, and sheer long term will power were even greater strengths for the Americans.

An irregular army that sucked would never have been able to orchestrate this kind of a guerilla war against the world's super power at that time.

Without getting into a political debate over Vietnam: This is like saying that the NVC and VC irregulars sucked. Now, even though the US DID win virtually every single clash of arms in that conflict - there is not a US veteran who served in that war who would say that the Cong sucked. They were a highly motivated enemy capable of adapting on the fly and experts in the most basic of guerilla warfare - to turn the enemy's strengths into weakness and turn your own weaknesses into strengths.

Guerilla warfare gets a bad rap as "unskilled" or "undisciplined". In reality, for it to work effectively your soldiers need to be quite the opposite. As an individual soldier, they need to be even more effective than the regular's they're facing.