It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Political groups use guerrilla tactics when they’re simply outgunned, whether by vastly superior industrial power, advanced technology, or even simple manpower. Those tactics have, in various methods, been used against the Chinese since time immemorial by northern horsemen. They were used against US cavalrymen in the west. Similar tactics were used by the Vietnamese against Chinese, French, and US forces at various times and places. And of course, there are many more examples.
The method of guerrilla engagement is to present no effective target for your enemy to strike. This means that his power cannot effectively target your forces. Additionally, he now has a choice: if he grows wrathful and reprises heavily by wiping out villages (etc), he risks sending more recruits and money to you. If you does nothing, he risks looking weak. It’s stilla weak strategy, however, and depends on a powerful enemy being either politicall or militarily incompetant. A guerrilla campaign also requires considerable cash, despite its relatively low-cost strategy. This means the guerrillas either need safe havens where the enemy can’t go or backing from other nations.
A terror campaign aims to, essentially, terrify - but not really. These get used when a political faction can’t organize a guerrila campaign. The actual purpose of this is to reate conditions where a guerrilla campaign may coalesce, not to actually do mch to the enemy directly. Terror is a tool, not and end. If the enemy’s nerve fails, he looks weak and emboldens potential allies of yours. If you reprises harshly, he may retain immediate power but enhance your long term prospects.
In the modern world, harsh reprisals may cause a lack of support on the part of the repriser’s allies. Iif the controlling power tightens his grip without crushing, he’ll probably win. The Roman empire was particularly good at this. In addition to a general permissiveness to the local non-royal elite, they invested conquered areas with top-notch garrisons and smashed any revolt. They showed considerable grace in dealing with subject peoples and invested in their economic future.
In a similar vein, if the Chechens pull off a few more stunts like their nasty little dust up in the Russian schools a few months ago, they’re likely to provoke a genocide campaign. It’s sort of like a union. If a union makes demands too high and refuses to deal, the company always has a last resort: move away or shut down. In the Chechen case, Russia has a last resort option. If world opinion turns to far against Chechnya, Russia can simply take them over, put everyone in camps (no populace, no guerrillas), and wipe out the rest. I’m not saying this is a good thing or not, but it’s their option and it’s happened before.
Suicide attacks (not merely bombing) are a tool of terror campaigns, but find a seperate and specific use. They are supposed to numb or instill fear in the population at large (or at least in a influential segment). In early China, suicide assassins were used by Important People to kill each other and destroy political opposition - without wiping out an entire faction by military force.
Despite the generally spectactular nature of these attacks (take a look at the descriptions of suicide assassins in early China sometime; it’s practically a gruesome public spectacle) they don’t actually seem to work that much. Despite decades of use in Israel, the Palestinians have neither improved their political nor economic situation. In fact, it seems that the bombing campaigns have simply reenforced a brutal factional system, while substituting flashy murder for economic progress. As the Romans would say, “Bread and Circuses”.
The greatest success of such campaigns was the WTC bombing - which was a spectacular failure from a political point of view. The economic damage was severe but has not caused the country’s economc collapse, not by a long shot. There’s fair argument that it was, in fact, motivated by a fantasy ideology compelled by the radical Islamist beliefs. After all, “the US can’t win”. “The US is the Great Satan. He will surely go down in defeat if the faithful fight.” But it weren’t so.
If you mean “would we risk soldier’s lives to secure a perimeter”, then yes. Soldiers risk their lives to serve their nation, and that includes protecting each other; soldiers will and do go on rescue missions that make no sense from a numerical perspective. And that means they guard each other as well. How, exactly, would we “harm our own”? This isn’t a video game; we can’t move equipment from one soldier to another to make a few super-units, leaving the rest to go hang.