Bill, I too have significant problem's with the perspective on COIN captured and propagated into US COIN doctrine by John Nagl - however my primary concerns are nearly a mirror image of your own.
IMO the US borrowed much of the tactical approach of the Brits in Malaya, but with none of the strategy. What John and most miss about Malaya, IMO, are the strategic lessons, choosing to focus on what the military did in support of the WOG COIN, as actually being the COIN.
The Brits returned to Malaya bent on restoring the colony, but quickly (compared to the US in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq) came to realize that goal was impossible, and therefore any COIN approach in support of the same would be infeasible. So they gave up on restoring illegitimate government under British governance, and instead shifted to facilitating the growth of legitimate local governance. This demanded the Brits to give up their control; and also to facilitate full participation and opportunity across the entire population. The military merely created the time and space for this to occur.
The Brits "won" by losing. Their dream of colony dashed by reality, the helped a sovereign commonwealth partner to emerge instead.
The US, on the other hand, fearful of the spread of communism, sought to quash the legitimacy of Vietnamese independence won over the French by the people of Vietnam. Now, did all Vietnamese want to be communist? Of course not, but a much greater percentage did not want to be French, or under the control of any other external power, such as the US.
It is a moot point, IMO, to debate the legitimacy of Ho's government with those who saw their interests served best by governance protected by a Western power like France or the US; the essential debate is legitimacy of the governments created/protected by the US in the South. Neither had universal legitimacy, but at least Ho's legitimacy was domestic.
Good COIN requires governance that seeks to be fully inclusive, that is reasonably controlled by the will of the people, and that is evolutionary in nature. This must be supported by security forces that protect this inclusive, evolutionary system of governance, and not some particular government. The branch that cannot bend, will surely break. When the majority perceive themselves to have effective legal mechanisms to shape governance in the context of their cultural expectations, the number who perceive they must act out illegally and violently will typically be rare and small. There is no fundamental problem with employing reasonable state power against these few, but again, it must be in support of an inclusive, evolutionary system, and not to simply defend a status quo that keeps some man or family in power, or that appears designed to support the fears and interests of some foreign power.
The US sucks at COIN because we think US control is so much better than what we replaced that people affected by it will not resist. That is beyond naïve.
The nature of governmental action will drive the nature of population response. But the character of governmental action will determine the degree or scope of that population response. Until the US military incorporates a presumption that resistance insurgency will follow invasion; and that revolutionary insurgency will follow any effort to create, shape or protect a foreign government, we will continue to suck at COIN.
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