There is a long history of successful and unsuccessful counterinsurgency campaigns waged by the US and others. In most of these places the government has little legitimacy in the sense that the US government is to its citizens the legitimate government of the US, and anyone trying to assert otherwise would be considered a pretender. Few countries outside of western democracies have a way to hand power legitimately from one group of folks to the next.
So the local decision for most folks is, do I accept the powers that be or do I join the insurgency against it. That choice is a pretty simple one depending upon whether you think you are better of with the bastard in charge than the bastard who wants to be in charge. If the guys in charge were unable to feed your family, and keep others from stealing your home and raping and murdering your family, it is really an easy choice. This is why Petraeus has emphasized the issues of local security AND local economic development. The first step in counterinsurgency is ensuring that the people under your protection can live their lives more or less contentedly. That is why in counterinsurgency respect for local customs and culture comes at the top of the list of things you do, not at the bottom.
It is something that comes hard to many Americans, and our Army is made up of "many" Americans. It comes hard to a lot of the supposedly well educated and well informed denizens of Free Republic.
Oh my God, I didn't know that I had a literalist who does not know that there are many meanings to the word "funny." I do not mean raucously hilarious. I meant something like one of it's other definitions "Strangely or suspiciously odd or curious." You know, these two juxtapositions of similar boggeddownness in a war of local anklebiters (biting with high powered rifles, mortars, and IED's) suggest a reflective person might inquire more deeply into the suspicious or curious similarity to discover whether lessons learned from mistakes in the one might be applied to the other.
There is virtually nothing right in this statement. The reaon Sun Tzu is timeless is because the principles of strategy have not changed in 2500 years since the Warring States Period in China. Terrorism was not unknown in China at that time, and in fact the disappearance of private means of warfare is mostly a function of the modern wester bureaucratic centralized state. The Vietcong had plenty of firepower at its disposal. In fact, the quantity of destructive explosives an individual could carry on his back has not changed much in a century, there being only so much chemical energy you can get out of a pound of matter.