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Leftists have tended to ascribe moral superiority to communists in general. .... Besides, military victory and the support of the population are distinct things. Most of the time, the people are just sitting around supporting their families and hoping to avoid being conscripted by the armies fighting around them. And for good reason. They know that the parties to the war aren't fighting it for their benefit. It's an outright struggle for power in which both sides are looking to them for employment as cannon fodder.

I am the last person in the world to think that communism is a good thing. But colonialism, particularly French colonialism, in Africa and Asia, was not exactly a great thing either, if you look at the record of violence and poverty that has been left in its wake. Consequently, while the communist side is certainly the wrong side, it turned out that putting up with the colonial bastards because they were our bastards was not a winning strategy either.

As to the rest of what you describe, that is why effective counterinsurgency strategies are necessary and why they work. You want to assure the nonpolitical guy who is just trying to get by day to day, that you will protect him, that the other guy is not going to win, and that he will be even better off if he can provide you with the local information you need about geography, resources, and movements of the enemy that you need to win village by village and town by town.

But colonialism, particularly French colonialism, in Africa and Asia, was not exactly a great thing either, if you look at the record of violence and poverty that has been left in its wake.

I think the negative effects of European colonialism have been much exaggerated by leftist historians. European governors were far better than the native rulers. Were they as brutal as native rulers in suppressing rebellions? Definitely not. Were native economies much improved from having been integrated into European empires? Definitely. The real problem with the post-colonial experience isn't colonial rule; it independence, which resulted in a reversion to the historical patterns of pre-European rule. The unfortunate reality is that native rule was always characterized by the incompetence and self-absorbed greed of the traditional native aristocracies. Communist or non-communist, traditional or newly-constituted, the native aristocracies are ultimately responsible for driving their economies into the ground.

Let me put it this way - for centuries, Europeans ran huge empires without seeing significant illegal immigration from the colonies. As soon as independence broke out, large numbers of illegals from the colonies suddenly showed up in Europe. Why? Because the fools’ paradise that was European rule was at an end. The natives would now have to deal with the arbitrary brutality and corruption of local despots - the same people who had treated them like slaves for thousands of years.