Actually, the French fought back primarily by attacking military "soft targets" such as rail lines, ammunition dumps, and other sites with a military value to the occupiers.cookyy2k said:
Conversely, the primary targets of the insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan (and even back in the day of the Vietcong) have been overwhelmingly CIVILIAN targets.
According to the Lancet Report --- you know, the one that claimed 600,000 Iraqi deaths had occurred by violence as early as 2004? --- over two-thirds of all such deaths were claimed to have been carried out by the insurgents.
Although the Lancet's numbers have been considered by many to be highly suspect due to 1000~ households somehow coming up with a full 1% of all death certificates issued to that point (there's therefore only 100,000~ households in Iraq, or Lancet ended up with a uniquely lopsided sample), a review of confirmable deaths and causes listed at IraqBodyCount.org supports the anti-civilian targeting approaches of the insurgents.
A prime example is that, in its first major action, the insurgents conducted a mortar attack on two major Shi'a mosques on a high holy day during the middle of prayer. US forces in the area were later castigated for not spotting and intercepting the attack before it could be carried out, particularly as it was clearly engineered towards killing the most helpless civilians possible in as short a time as possible.
Other examples include suicide bombers targeting civilian shops when no Coalition troops are around, leaving cartfuls of toys on school playgrounds with bombs buried underneath the toys, and attempting to detonate mustard-gas artillery rounds in the middle of population areas.
Precisely the sort of people many anti-war activists claim WE are --- mass murderers with no compunction regarding the slaughter of civilians --- are the people we are, in fact, fighting to rid Iraq and Afghanistan of.
