I wanted to follow up on my earlier point about Americans, in particularly, using a consummately Western conceptualization.

In social science, the way to test a hypothesis is to ask, "If this hypothesis is true, what would I expect to observe?"

If the hypothesis is "'good governance' and 'legitimacy' defined as per U.S. doctrine are vital to or crucial to defeating in insurgency," then we'd expect to see counterinsurgency campaigns that do those things successful and those which do not unsuccessful.

I'll admit I haven't compiled the data and could be wrong, but I'd be willing to bet Dave Dilegge's last dollar that the historical data doesn't show that. I believe Americans cling to that notion less because it reflects reality than because it reflects our preconceptions, viz. that other people share our priorities, preferences, and perceptions.

I think the notion that insurgency arises when regimes do not reflect Western notions of good governance and legitimacy, and insurgencies are defeated when regimes do reflects the attitudes which drove European colonialism. This idea has become ingrained in American counterinsurgency thinking because this thinking was derived from European colonialists like Thompson and Galula.