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All the high tech weaponry in the world doesn't matter for counterinsurgency purposes. Modern combined arms warfare is optimized for defeating peer and near peer adversaries in a stand up fight, not for blowing up a bunch of goat fuckers with rifles. If the enemy doesn't have anti-tank missiles or tanks, a multi-million dollar main battle tank is no more combat effective than a pickup with armor plates welded on and a cannon in the back. If the enemy doesn't have radar, your multi-billion dollar supersonic stealth strike fighter is no better than a crop duster with bombs strapped on it. Of course having armor and air support at all is super important, but the overmatch eventually doesn't provide any additional value.
During WW2, China lost nearly all its modern equipment and trained forces in the early days of the war, leaving them to fight the remainder of the war with only obsolete or crudely made small arms, against an enemy with machine guns, trucks, tanks, artillery, and air support. An enemy that was also willing to go gloves off and genocide the as many Chinese as necessary to win. Yet even with collapsing state capacity and morale against an overwhelming enemy, the Chinese still managed to stubbornly cling on to territory and inflict serious losses to the enemy, while only taking 3:1 casualties in direct confrontation. Actual gorilla warfare which does not even attempt to meet the enemy's attach head on would achieve a much more favorable kill ratio.
In the end a lake is more powerful than a water bottle, but a bucket will do the job just as well. Yet insurgencies have succeeded in the past even against determined and far more powerful opponents.
The Allies (primarily the US) provided a total of something like 650,000 tons of materiel to China via The Hump, at the cost of nearly 600 aircraft and around 1700 crew lost. There were also notable Allied air units (and some ground units) in China during the war.
Which isn't to diminish their accomplishment, but it wasn't completely a solo effort.
The origin of the meme "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" is that various WW2-era generals (of whom Montgomery was the first to go on the record in 1962) thought that Allied assistance to China in WW2 had been a mistake - presumably because Chiang and Mao preferred to use the aid to fight each other and not the Japanese.
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I do love autocorrect sometimes.
oh no, I've gone to great lengths to make sure I always turn autocorrect off.
In that case I have no choice but to concede. Actual gorilla warfare would have the Japs on the run.
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