The interesting part of your scenario is where you assume the 10k insurgency happens in a vacuum. The insurgency in Iraq only involved some tens of thousands of fighters but many hundreds of thousands or millions more were sympathetic.
Right, but what about all those people who like a stable government and life as usual in the U.S.?
If I see a bunch of gun nuts out there shooting at cops and troops, it's, frankly speaking, an easy call to make whose side I'm on. I trust the government we've got over the one those guys want to install by force.
