Joint India Indonesian Army Exercise Garud Shakti Concludes.

[Dayuhan]

While I have no problem with the Colour Revolution or the Arab Spring or the Iraq War or the US reasserting itself in the Asia Pacific Region because each is a geostrategic necessity, if seen from the US standpoint, I do find it difficult to credit the 'purer than driven snow' justifications as wholesome truths.

I certainly wouldn't accuse the US of purity; I just don't think they have the capacity to generate revolutions on demand.

RCJ made this comment:

Those who seek to address perceived social-political grievances will typically seek/need some degree of support to advance their goals. There will always be those who see that that their own goals can be advanced by such changes as well, and will provide that support.

and it's true to some extent, It's important to realize, though, that many of these "flash revolutions" are not the product of some organized movements to redress grievances. They can emerge independently of any such movement and there's rarely enough time for anyone to try to leverage them. In the instance with with I'm most familiar, the Manila uprising in '86, bothe the NPA and the USA failed to anticipate the form events would take and were forced into reactive positions. I see evidence of the same phenomenon in Tunisia and Egypt, and in the Color Revolutions.

Therefore, in my limited knowledge of geostrategy and geopolitics, I believe that the momentous events are not solely self driven or self ignited.

Of course all powers pursue their own interests, but it's a fallacy to assume that all that happens is therefore a product of great powers pursuing their interests. The efforts of the great powers may prove redundant, and events may emerge that bypass them. They can also have a wide range of unintended consequences.

I'd say that any attempt to attribute the Arab Spring or Color Revolutions to US agency has to have a stronger basis than the simple assumption that the US must have been involved because it must have been involved.

Since you are from the Philippines, you would be aware that the Hilarion del Rosario aka ahmed Santos is a Filipino who converted to Islam while working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1991. Therefore, for a staunch Catholic to convert to Islam without Saudi Mullahs' encouragement would be too hard to believe. Further, such a man would proselytise and convert many more Catholics and organise, fund, arm such Catholic converts into a radical Islamic terrorist organisation without Wahabbi backing would also be a bit extraordinary a phenomenon to believe.

I'm very familiar with the Balik-Islam movement, the short and less than happy life of the Rajah Solaiman Group, and the career of Ahmed Santos. I did a fair bit of research on the subject at one point, including fairly extensive interviews. I haven't time to discourse on the subject now, especially as I tend to go verbose on such things, but I think you're misreading it in some quite substantial ways.