Follow-up to yesterday's treatment of clashing civilizations

Here is a lecture from Edward Said disputing Huntington's Clash of Civilizations.

Here is a Pritzker library presentation from John Nagl, on his book "Learning to eat Soup with a Knife", about counterinsurgency. Ralph Peters, in his lecture on "Wars of Blood and Faith" that I linked to yesterday, made disparaging references to counterinsurgency. I sort of have to agree with him, as does this article questioning the possibility of fighting a clean, humane counterinsurgency. It just seems to me that for an occupying force in a land not their own, it is difficult to win the hearts and minds of local people. I can imagine the possibility of decimating and repressing an insurgent movement and the local populace that supports it so much that they cease resisting, at least for a time. But by definition a counterinsurgency is almost always a fight against indigenous, organic, local movements that spring up from the people, and it seems unlikely to me that the people of a place would side more with an outside force than with a local insurgency.