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 Huk problem in the north by forcing massive resettlement to the south. But at the end of the day, who does the populace go to for resolution of such problems?? The Government. If they find no justice, no equity there, if they really don't feel that government to be their government, what do they turn to next? This is the essence of insurgency.

Careful readers will note that i too recognize that many Filipinos do blame the US for their situation. Insurgency is all about perception, and facts and truth are distant cousins at best.

As to AQ everywhere. AQ does not create insurgency. AQ ideology does not create insurgents. AQ is an opportunist, non-state actor that targets Muslim populaces with actionable grievances and conducts UW to attempt to incite local insurgency to action, and to recruit individuals to conduct AQ specific operations as well. The governance-populace dynamic in SEA shook off Western manipulation in the 40s-70s and is on their own messy journey of self-determination, so AQ is not needed and has little influence there. In the Middle East the path to self determination began with the Turkish and Iranian revolutions over 100 years ago, but was quickly quashed by European and US efforts to secure their own interests in the region. It began moving again post-cold war, and even blind men could see this as "Arab Spring" took these movements to the next level. AQ has set up franchised UW shops around the region to leverage this popular energy. They do not cause it, they support it. (We do not support it, we help suppress it or stand neutral. We are in a quandary of the principles we profess, the values we peddle as "universal," and the fears over economic and security interests that drive us to decisions that no one can figure out).

No, I do not fight to force things into my model, I merrily tweak and revise my model whenever new insights come to the surface. You, my brother, do fight to embrace the model. That is fine. I feel that your instincts tell you that there it great validity in it, but that you have a very fact-reliant component to your thinking, that makes you resist. Like Thomas, you must see and touch the holes. Facts are important, but so is faith and instinct, because sometimes the facts lie; and certainly that narrow set of facts that gets entered into evidence (captured in history) will always tell the story that the storyteller wants to tell.

As I gently goaded Gian last week in response to his comments on a "failure of generalship," I can see many things our generals do that I disagree with, but I see them acting IAW their training, doctrine and experience. What really kills us is a "failure of historian-ship."