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I agree that a kind of symmetrical warfare can get badly self-defeating if done in a too conventional way. The way the Maoist-like brigade gets easily raided at the end of the movie Children of Men is a very good and realistic example. The 3-letter agencies have studied asymmetrical warfare for decades, so sticking to same-old symmetrical warfare ain't a good idea.

ETA somewhat succeeded at that, for a while, and it's the best instance of a long-standing insurrection, but also of how symmetrical insurrections fail in a contemporary context. They got nailed in the end, due to their unwillingness to adapt to a transgenerational context of EU liberal democracy; with the old power center of hegemony dislocated elsewhere (Brussels, Frankfurt, etc) and with new forms of social control measures, that includes "self-policing", public infrastructure and institutional/consumerist pacification.

ETA killed a lot of cops and stopped a nuke plant from being built, yet they didn't stop the soft power brought by a tourist industry and related transportation industry. They failed to see how the soft power is tougher than the hard in a postmodern world, but also did not get postmodernity at all. An asymmetrical approach demands a "holistic" view of State domination, beyond the focus on flash point issues as the Left went deeply into.

I'd rather be trusting and supporting random people's capacity to adapt to situations in a situation of open, violent conflict. Underestimating their ingenuity and creativity is the mistake of all invading/repressive forces through history. This is the biggest force in human evolution, and is still unproven to be effectively tackled by human control systems.

Yes, common consumer-citizens are dumb, deeply dumb... 'til they quit being consumer-citizens.