Washington's War: The American War of Independence to the Iraqi Insurgency

Michael Rose exposes a grim reality: Iraqi insurgents have adopted the same guerrilla warfare tactics used during the American Revolution.In June 1775, George Washington commanded a band of rebels who were, in the eyes of the British, nothing more than a collection of "vagrants, deserters and thieves." Yet he led them in a revolution against the British, which ended with an American victory. Washington succeeded in defeating the most powerful army in the world—not by engaging in conventional warfare, at which the British excelled, but by waging an insurgency campaign of ambush and indirect attacks. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, and in the years that have followed, America has found itself fighting a widespread popular insurrection with an army trained for conventional warfare.