Guerilla warfare

Guerilla warfare (also with two r's - Guerrilla warfare) is defined in the Army Technology glossary as "an unconventional mode of warfare, where operations take place in hostile or enemy territory by irregular forces."[1]

More definitions

According to the "Encyclopedia of Marxism," guerrilla warfare is "an aspect of popular warfare that is strategically defensive and tactically aggressive. Guerrilla warfare is strategically defensive because it spawns under a repressive government in defense of the interests of workers/peasants, or forms in the interests of national liberation against an occupying enemy force. It is tactically aggressive because its aim is to overthrow the repressive government, or force the withdrawal of an occupying army. Guerrilla warfare commonly begins spontaneously, but may be used as a means of revolutionary struggle." [2] However, guerrilla warfare techniques have been studied, adapted and used on behalf of diverse political ideologies, including both left and right.

According to one writer in his "manual for the training of guerrillas in psychological operations," guerilla warfare is "essentially a political war. Therefore, its area of operations exceeds the territorial limits of conventional warfare, to penetrate the political entity itself ... This conception of guerrilla warfare as political war turns Psychological Operations into the decisive factor of the results. The target, then, is the minds of the population, all the population: our troops, the enemy troops and the civilian population."

Related SourceWatch articles

• Army After Next
• asymmetric warfare
• blowback
• Defense After Next
• Fourth-generation warfare
• Gray Fox
• Intelligence Support Activity
• Iran-Contra scandal
• Iraqi insurgency
• Joint Special Operations Command
• Office of Net Assessment
• Office of Special Plans
• Operation Enduring Freedom
• Operation Iraqi Freedom
• preemptive war
• Proactive Preemptive Operations Group
• psychological warfare; see psyops
• revolution in military affairs
• Special Operations Command
• Task Force 121
• U.S. Central Command
• war
• war on terrorism
• war propaganda

External links

• "Guerrilla," from Wikipedia.org, defines guerrilla warfare as "one of the oldest forms of asymmetric warfare and gives examples of its use in Europe, the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, Latin America and the Vietnam War.
• "Tacayán", "Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare. A tactical manual for the revolutionary that was published by the Central Intelligence Agency and distributed to the Contras in Central America." (Last modified:05/21/2002).
• "Instruments of Statecraft. U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990."
• News & Articles on Guerilla Warfare, SurfWax.com. Files updated frequently.