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I suspect Ken might have been at that particular cabinet meeting, so I defer to his assessment...:D

But the true sea change was as we came to realize post-WWII that it was not going to be all...

Dave,

Excellent add. The US used to promote self-determination and take the position that we had no right to levy moral judgments onto others, and certainly no duty to intervene in small...

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...

Once again, your violent agreement is noted. :)

Yes, the indigenous population and those "settlers", who came from where and represented who? And of course Magsaysay's program to help reduce the...

Well, we all know that the friction between Muslim south and Catholic north did not begin in the 1970s. Conditions of insurgency ebb and flow within every populace, but are poorly understood if only...

What Bill just said.

The realization that I have come to over the years is that much of good "COIN" is in many ways counter-intuitive. Governments are, by definition, the legal actor. ...

Of course there was "pressure from the bottom." That is the essence of insurgency. Sometimes it is primarily illegal and violent; sometimes it is primarily illegal and non-violent; usually it is...

I am with both Bill and Dayuhan on this. Yes, JSOTF-P has made a marked influence on HOW the security forces of the Philippines engage the general populace that they encounter in the course of...

Bill,

Any music without a steady drumbeat usually ends up rambling along aimlessly... Like COIN operations designed to pursue threats or effectiveness...

Certainly governments need to...

Like most insurgencies, the conflict is waged in some remote corner among the disaffected segment of the populace; too often with the military as the agent of the government; but can only be resolved...

Dayuhan

Agree that the U.S. can do little about it, and by our very presence create a handy 3rd party to lay blame at the feet of (governments do not take responsibility, and even populaces...

I suspect there is a little bias and a couple of inaccuracies in that piece, but if one can look past that to the essence, the tone, to the populace's perception, one gets an idea of why this nation...

The key to victory (i.e., some enduring state of peaceful good governance in the Southern Philippines), has always been in Manila. The military effort helps create conditions for success, but until...