Actually, protracted wars against entrenched insurgent populations have been won, both historically and recently. The Huks in the Philippines in the 1950 for o

Actually, protracted wars against entrenched insurgent populations have been won, both historically and recently. The Huks in the Philippines in the 1950 for one. The Tamil Tigers, inventors of the sucide belt, holders of the world record for killing heads of state, and pioneers in crashing civilian aircraft into government targets, were put down in 2009 after thirty years of war. There's nothing magic about an insurgeny - most die stillborn. There's a whole lot of survivorship bias when looking at this. Defeated insurgencies don't make the news.