Posted by KingJaja

I am not an expert on this matter, but the appeal of AQ or Boko Haram has less to do with lofty rhetoric but the promise of better government, social services, just laws etc.
I agree that poor governance contributes, but also believe it is grossly over simplistic to narrow down problems to one underlying cause. There are many locations where there are poor governance and no insurgency. In the case of AQ it requires an underlying condition (normally poor governance, or a foreign occupation) and a Muslim population, because their exploiting religion as much as poor governance.

The US usually finds itself aligned with corrupt and incompetent politicians
I don't disagree, and this is definitely a topic worth exploring in more depth, because it is often the reason we fail in our interventions, even though our intentions are good, and we clearly have overwhelming military and economic might. Sort of, kind of indicates the moral issues are more decisive than might, and narratives that attempt to justify an inept and corrupt government are almost guarunteed to fail.

We choose these relationships because they are convenient, and of course a corrupt politician can be bought and influenced by us and others. Unconventional warfare of the years has been successful in the shortrun, but often fails in the long run based on convenient relations, much like the U.S. putting Mafia members in charge of key positions of Italy to help "stabilize" it as they "liberated" Italy. To avoid this we would have to slow the train down and seek to understand before we engage, and we would also have to dump those that supported us if they turned out to be corrupt. I suspect neither will happen.

On the other hand, you need to also add to your comment that the government the U.S. ousted was just as corrupt, or that the insurgent force attempting to take over the government are just as corrupt.