Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
...without realizing that these events are often driven less by discontent rising to a tipping point than by the leader's control declining to a tipping point.
True -- and Bob's World will agree wholeheartedly...
Of course in the Philippines the leader's incapacity was evident far before the tipping point was reached, allowing more preparation.
Also true and a contributor to the rather rapid DC decision to provide air transport at no cost. Therein lay the decisiveness of which I spake; albeit not clearly...
the US role in resolving the events in Manila in '86 is substantially overstated.
Not to my knowledge, really and I did not mean to imply that it was significant or game changing though I did through careless wording. Can't even claim laziness there, just sloppily careless.
There was a great deal of dithering, and the US action was not decisive, nor was it at the peak of protest: by the time the US acted the matter had already been resolved on the streets.
All true however, the amount of dithering for about two years culminated in a rapid two days of meetings in the basement of the WH. That's what I meant by 'decisive' -- unusually rapid decision by the US to aid and abet what had indeed already been decided when the HKPP refused to fire on the protesters IIRC.
This is not entirely a criticism of the US - it's not always a bad idea to see who's going to win before committing to a side - but it would be inaccurate to refer to the US action as "decisive". It did avoid a very unpleasant end for both the rebellion and the Marcos family, but it did not affect the outcome one way or the other.
Again true -- but still a 'decisive' action by the then Administration who were noted ditherers. Witness Lebanon.

I have long ( going on 31 years...) contended that Carter's abysmal handling of the Tehran Embassy seizure, Reagan's foolish foray into Lebanon and the mishandling of that whole episode, Bush 41s failure to topple Saddam in 91 and Clinton's tail wagging (that's a celebrity buzz - pop culture reference not a veiled innuendo) led to the attacks in the US in 2001 (and others worldwide before that time). So I'm not a Reagan fan. However, while he didn't topple Marcos, he did take surprisingly and unusually (for the US outside a war) decisive action when many were urging him to not take the action he did -- that was my poorly stated point.
Not that I ever fully trusted the official record of anything...
That's always a wise course...