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. Insurgents, by definition, are the illegal actor. When the populace, regardless of how morally just their cause may be, decides that acting out through illegal actions and violence is their only option it is natural for the state to respond through the application of greater security. All the more so if one is armed with a COIN doctrine that tells you that "insurgency and COIN are forms of complex war and warfare."
Bottom up approaches can do good things, but are not likely to produce enduring effects in such top down problems.
Focused security efforts, even focused capture/kill operations, are often justified and can be a critical component of an effective campaign (if executed by the host nation and not some foreign power that is working its own agenda for its own interests and who is more apt to miss the nuance of "purpose for action" that distinguishes a "transnational terrorist" from a "nationalist insurgent."). But such efforts must be in a clearly subordinate and supporting role to efforts to evovle and address the aspects of governance that are at the causal roots of such conflicts.
My sense is that the Philippines is not ready to reform itself yet. Such reforms will likely come in time, but our pushing to make it happen on our timeline IAW our parameters is not likely to produce anything that will be best for that nation. We American's buy too quickly into our own PSYOP, and lack strategic patience. That can be a bad combination that results in dangerously aggressive acts of "do gooderism."
I don't believe that the US has much to fear coming out of the Philippines, or really anywhere in South East Asia. Sure, some small group may come from, or stage from that area, but that is equally true of virtually any place on Earth. This is not about Muslims, this is about Muslims who are held in bad political situations that they perceive are both beyond their control, and that they equally perceive are kept beyond their control due to the actions of some manipulative foreign power. Most of the South East Asian nations worked through these issues on nationalism and sovereignty in the post WWII social upheaval. This is always a roller coaster journey, as cultures as well as governments must evolve in fits and starts toward what works for them. This is a journey that can be guided or encouraged, and perhaps facilitated in some degree. Our problem is that we are so enamored over what works for us is that we forget that our own populace had to evolve in the isolation of the Colonies for a couple hundred years first, and then had to work through another couple hundred years of trial and error democratic experimentation to get to the "masterpiece" we enjoy to day (tongue firmly in cheek).
I hope we never lose our genuine spirit of to do good and to share the fruits of our labors. But I do wish we would develop the strategic patience that more mature nation's seem to possess, (and that we would learn to look at insurgency in a more holistic fashion than our military doctrine-based approaches; or State/Aid democracy/development-based approaches tend to lend themselves to.)
Cheers!
Bob
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