free to choose?
Galula describes this as a battle between two camps on who will "control" the population, a battle the counterinsurgent must win, or he risks losing the war. I think it is important to take his words literally, because he specifies control, which does not necessarily equate to winning the hearts and minds. The terrorists don't control the population with carrots, they'll simply brutally them and family members if they don't comply. I would call that control. He also states that in many cases the villagers (or townsfolk, etc.) were previously under control of the insurgents overtly, and now that the counterinsurgent is there the insurgents will still most likely exert varying degrees covert control until we can root out these covert cells.
I don't see it as a competition of menus that the populace as the freedom to choose from, because we always offer the lobster and steak special, compared to the rice and stale fish menu from the other camp, but that rice and stale fish looks pretty good when some is holding a knife to your son's throat. Hell yea, they'll take our steak and lobster, but that doesn't give us control.
A technique he offered was to order the population to do certain tasks to teach them that the coalition is in charge, because our orders would give them an excuse for working with the coalition, so hopefully they would be killed by the insurgents.
Until we figure out the security and control piece, our fancy menu means very little.
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