Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
One way to manage this might be to change the law on dealings with designated terrorist organizations. Another, likely easier, would be to review the list of designated terrorist organizations and trim out those that are more insurgent than terrorist. On my own turf, I'd have to say that while I've no great affection for the New People's Army, the "terrorist" designation has no real basis.

I do think, though, that the assumption that insurgents are necessarily "seeking better conditions" is as naive as the assumption that insurgents are by definition bad people seeking bad things. Most of them are simply seeking power. They may try to ride on popular grievances but in most cases they've little real desire to resolve those grievances. They want power, and once they have it they generally use it in much the same ways their predecessors did.
Many countries have such a revolving door. Poor Governance exists, the only route open to change is through Coup or insurgency, so it gains popular support; then once the new guy is in, he merely picks up where the old left off.

This is why I recognize the COIN genius of Madison. There were many of our beloved founding fathers who would have quickly picked up where British Governance had left off. Creating a Constitution and specifically a Bill of Rights to foil any such attempts was brilliant pre-emptive COIN. If you want to learn COIN, study Insurgents first, then read what the COIN SMEs have to say.

Our founding fathers were both, Insurgents first, sage COINdinistas second.