Originally Posted by cykoe6

Tell that to the Viet Cong or the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. It is extremely difficult to defeat a well armed guerrilla insurgency on their own territory. Additionally in an all out civil war it is usually very difficult to keep all of the armed forces loyalty to central authority. If you study your history you will find that in civil wars the armed forces typically split into various factions loyal to their commanders rather than any central authority. See Yugoslavia in the 1990s or Russia in the 1920s.