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I've seen it argued numerous times that an armed populace such as ours still does not have the might to stand up to an organized professional army. What this arugment ignores, however, is that a resistance movement needs not defeat an invading army head-on to be successful.
Even a despotic leader needs the will and support of the majority of his people in order to be successful. No less an authority than Sun Tzu plainly stated that no country has ever benefited from prolonged war. All that a resitance movement has to do to ultimately defeat an invading army is to make the occupation so prolonged and so costly that the invading leader loses the will and support of his people. For a graphic example of this, one needs look no further than the Vietnam War. The U.S., starting out, had just about every military advantage and neither the NVA nor VC could ever succeed in taking on the Americans head-to-head. What they did have, however, was the determination to turn the Vietanm War into a drawn-out, ugly, and costly war that the American people eventually stopped supporting.
Likewise, a resistance movement can tie-down and weaken an invading force enough to leave them at the mercy of their other enemies. For example, resistance movements in France, Norway, Greece, and several other contries during WWII served to tie-down the German army, forced the Germans to consume valuable resources, and provided valuable intelligence to the Allies. All of this contributed to the eventual Allied victory.
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