Guerrilla Tactics

Tactics best employed in the 20th century by General Vo Nguyen Giap. With poorly armed volunteer peasant forces he was able to remove from his country two world powers, France and the US.

Some of the rules were:

1. Never fight a battle you can't win. If you greatly outnumber your enemy, strike. Otherwise hide.
2. Help the farmers while hiding. They will protect you and listen to you, and eventually fight beside you.
3. Always have 4 or 5 escape routes, at least 2 of which should be totally hidden.
4. It's better to run away than die. (This was a big departure from previous tactics and codes of conduct.) The idea being that as long as you were alive, you had a chance to kill more enemies. As soon as you were dead, you were no longer helping the cause.

I'm working on a long exposition about guerrilla warfare. This is one of my areas of interest. -- EricHodges

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Number one seems somewhat counter to what I normally associate with Guerrilla tactics, namely that they involve utilizing ingenuity to overcome a lower position of power. Has the term changed in meaning over the years? -- JimLipsey

Guerrilla tactics can and do involve strikes against superior forces. However, one never fights the battle on the enemy's terms. Let's say there's a supply convoy. Can your small band of buddies take it out? Only with terrible losses. Ok, don't do that. Can you, with a hit-and-run strike, delay the convoy, tie up the road for a while, and -- this is the important part -- cause the enemy to be more cautious on the next convoy? Do that! By making the enemy cautious, you will cause him to tie up more of his forces protecting convoys. Your small band has now had an effect upon the enemy far out of proportion to your numbers.

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Yes, number 1 is a real guerrilla tactic. I was surprised by it, too. Check out James McCoy's Secrets Of The Viet Cong (ISBN 0781800285 ) for extensive details about these tactics. -- EricHodges

Point number 1 only refers to outnumbering the enemy in one particular situation or battle, not necessarily the whole war. With this interpretation it isn't surprising.

Point 1 is straight out of SunTzu's 'TheArtOfWar'.

Also tied to the point 4 pretty strongly. "Above all else, survive" the Ninja says.

Dead people don't get to vote; at least in most states.

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