Well, where you see me making over-simplified points, I see you agonizing over details that are not material to forming a strategic understanding of the nature of the problem at hand.

Once one has a strategic understanding of the nature of the dynamic of insurgency (with historic western biases captured in all of the COIN literature, histories, governmental lessons learned and doctrines, etc distilled out to the degree possible) one get gets a basic framework for understanding that then allows them to look at any single specific situation with all of its unique facts, cultures, history, etc and begin sorting out where to begin and what to focus on. I shift the focus from the insurgent (for those in the war is war, just kill the threat camp) and from the populace (for those in the "win the hearts and minds", "control the populace," and development camps) to one that focuses on the government. Not to make any government more "effective" (which too often leads to long, expensive programs of building security force capacity, massive development programs, massive rule of law programs, etc) but rather on what I simply call "goodness." Those critical, intangible aspects of human nature that are so fundamental to human happiness that when abused or ignored by some government lead to growing "conditions of insurgency" or despair and frustration and anger that lead good honest citizens to be willing to act out illegally against their own government to seek change.

Governments don't like this. Far better to blame others, or to blame the economy or other factors beyond their control. "goodness" is always totally within the control of any government and typically costs little if anything to implement, adopt or repair. Populaces inherently understand this, and it contributes to why it is these conditions that fuel the fires of insurgency. They realize that these conditions exist because the government either intentionally wants them to exist, or simply does not care about them enough to make minor changes required to address them.

Arab Spring events are merely the latest major move by these populaces, and are indeed connected to the major moves the 1906 and 1908 constitutional revolutions in Iran and Turkey. The conditions of governance across the region are untenable and are changing. Evolution of governance can relieve this pressure, or those same governments can ratchet up the security and public bribes in efforts to reduce popular pressure so that they can retain the status quo that they are happy with. AQ indeed did not cause the Arab Spring revolts, but to say it was "without them" misses that AQ has played a role in this over all dynamic of helping to people to understand that they can act out, that they can stand up. I doubt many want what AQ is selling, or want to live in a Caliphate controlled by AQ. But they want liberty, self-determination, respect, justice under the law. They also want to feel that their government answer to them and to God as they see appropriate (not as some Western power sees appropriate based on completely different values, culture, etc).

Is the totality of this overwhelming in details? Certainly, but there is a common essence that allows us to make sense of it all and focus on the right things. Plus the beauty of my approach is that it can be no less effective than other approaches, and will always be far less expensive, dangerous or intrusive to implement.