War existed before there was anything resembling a state. War was fought for that which enhances the wherewithal to have a dinner and a date, with or without the prior presumption of pregnancy. All forms of life compete for dinner and/or a date. The object is also not to be the dinner, but to have it. Birds do, bees do it, cattle do it, elks do it, my crabgrass does it, and so does any subset of humanity in any aggregated of collective status.
Nomadic people nomad seasonally for food, feed, and/or fornication with a gene pool variable of the opposite sex. Rape of the Sabines wasn't a rape, it was a deal. The old adage of picking out a virgin for sacrifice for the Gods (or Dragon) raises the question of why a virgin? What would a dragon want with a virgin? But the protection of virginity against unauthorized deflorisation is part of the defense mechanism for predictability of the gene pool of the male. That very basic biological reality is carried over in the Great War against Them by We'all. 
War existed before there was anything resembling a state. War was fought for that which enhances the wherewithal to have a dinner and a date, with or without the prior presumption of pregnancy. All forms of life compete for dinner and/or a date. The object is also not to be the dinner, but to have it. Birds do, bees do it, cattle do it, elks do it, my crabgrass does it, and so does any subset of humanity in any aggregated of collective status.
Nomadic people nomad seasonally for food, feed, and/or fornication with a gene pool variable of the opposite sex. Rape of the Sabines wasn't a rape, it was a deal. The old adage of picking out a virgin for sacrifice for the Gods (or Dragon) raises the question of why a virgin? What would a dragon want with a virgin? But the protection of virginity against unauthorized deflorisation is part of the defense mechanism for predictability of the gene pool of the male. That very basic biological reality is carried over in the Great War against Them by We'all.
So long as tribes and extended families had some leeway, there was no need for anything other than a council of elders (aka Good Old Boys) to decide on domestic policy, plus the decision to wage war (raiding the village next door for horses and virgins). Since combat by committee in conducive to analysis paralysis and decision inversion, the most common practice is to appoint a war chief, Chief Big Stud or Crafty Old Fox to lead the raid. After the raid, the Chief is mostly honorific until honorifics don't produce the requisite homage and humility of Great Chief requires.
This is born, civil war, which besides being an oxymoron, has mostly to do as to whose blood line is more better than the other bastards. William of Normandy, etc. The Bantu often split on a contentious inheritance with the loser moving away. Thus the Bantu roamed north and south the length of Africa from Ethiopia to Mozambique.
The problem of divided inheritance in conjunction with competence provides a wealth of drama, sturm und drang. The Turks had a solution: winning son of Sultan murders all his brothers with a silken cords. Ottomans lasted a long time.
The terms used to describe violence at present are too cluttered up with bullshititis with connotation more significant that denotation i.e. the "buzz"is more important than the word. Terrorism, insurgency. insurrection, rebellion, riot, and disorder are buzz clusters denoting a dash or touch or potful of illegitimacy hence derogatory regardless of what sort of military action is involved. The counter flavor suffers likewise.
Calling the Taliban an insurgency against an Afghan regime established on American rotor blades may go down well in Georgetown, but in Ghazna (Afghanistan, it might work if America was a Muslim state, maybe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghaznavids See also: Queen Boadicca of the Icena
As for the tactics of rebel vs non-rebel is a matter of firepower and air superiority which dictates the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) used on any given patch of the world including the locals whose feelings pro or con, will ultimately undo the done, even if it takes a few centuries (The Irish, Jews, Poles, Czechs, and Red Neck,for example),
The development of portable terror (current family of small arms) which can deny the use of ground for a hundred meters in any clear direction by one person so armed, changed the dynamics of battle by increasing the practical lethality of small and dispersed gaggles of grunts that would have been cavalry bait for the last four thousand years. Any weapons system that doesn't inspire terror should be scrapped, or wind up being crapped on by a better armed foe.
Winning or losing a war, is harder to define since enslaving the losers for fun and profit is no longer a viable economic factor justifying war on grounds of profit, The conquests of the Good Auld Days when the We'all take the farmland, forests, and mines of Them for Our Use, made sense. The Roman soldier was a paid warrior unlike the barbarians that stormed the Empire for virgins, gold, and other useful trinkets.
Barbarian warfare, including the barbarous Mongols, was a nation on hooves and a few wheels including families in a massive unstoppable horde (Golden, White, etc) until the grass ran out. OR, some local honey wiggled and winked her way into some barbarian's good favor (the Date part) that which followed naturally induced many a barbarian to settle down: Magyars, Tatars, Huns, Manchu, et al leaving pockets of mixed DNA in measurable bands across the Eurasian continent.
Special operations, is a buzz word for raid followed by pillage and/or plunder. Plunder being computer hard drives,etc. Same fundamentals as stealing horses from the Fugawi Indian Tribe. Stability and COIN is getting the horses back, plus a scalp/
The rise of Kings with Power that arose at the dawn of ancient civilization defined as having permanent buildings. Permanent buildings emerged as incident to a stationary locus of commerce, goods for goods requiring storage. Added to this is the move on ancient tribes from the foothills to closer to rivers that could be channeled into irrigation and flood control. This required war chief type management, wherein the scribe secretly controlled the flow of information to and from the Great Decider. See Eric Hoffer's True Believer and the likes.
Permanent buildings require a manager capable of getting the right ditches dug, right bricks baked and aligned, etc. This person is today known as the General Contractor who is therefore the Oldest Profession. Since general contractors often cheat on quality of construction and materials such that the word 'sincere' in Latin means "without wax" concerning the practice of covering cracks in marble with wax.
The oldest law in Western History is the Code of Hammurabi was largely a building code specifying death to the engineer whose building collapsed. In Egypt, Moses who also was a in house contractor primarily served as the Pharaoh's building inspector. Thus the Building Inspector is the second oldest profession.
Thus the basic dynamics of all local politics is born, that of control over how will build what, where, and how, Governator in particular. In order to deal with the Building Inspector is where the other oldest profession comes into play, playing for hearts, minds, and cash. Thus local politics is mostly a clash between those in the construction and entertainment businesses. Osama's family were the largest general contractors in Saudi Arablia.
OBTW: All politics is local
