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The notion that insurgents (perhaps you would prefer "freedom fighters") in Iraq are resisting the US military is basically absurd. Fewer than 4000 coalition troops have been killed over more than 4 years. That's fewer than a thousand troops per year, out of an occupying force of more than 100,000. Contrast to Vietnam, where more than 50,000 were killed in a 4-year period.
The real secret to the insurgency's "success" is that they don't mind murdering innocents. In fact, if they kill enough innocent Iraqis, they'll probably win. So the real lesson here is not that a determined populace can defeat an armed aggressor. It's that extremist groups using cell phones and the internet to coordinate and armed with relatively modern weaponry can beat the hell out of unarmed civilians living in
clay buildings. So take those IEDs and head down to the local elementary school, should be a real soft target.
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One of the reasons so few troops have died when compared to Vietnam and other conflicts has to do with advances in medical technology. Wounds that were 100% lethal in the Vietnam era are now very survivable.
Another reason has to do with troop levels (and frankly the piss poor planing of the military and the administration). If you compare our small (current 120,000 troops, less than 1 million total for Iraq conflict) to the numbers in Vietnam (+500,000 in 1968 8.7 million total) and the WWII (16.1 million total U.S. troop force from Dec 1941 to Dec 1946), it is easy to see why the number of casualties have not been as high as previous wars. It may also be one of the reasons that we are bogged down and having our a$$es handed to us.