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Treading Softly in the Philippines

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12.27.2008 at 11:48am

Max Boot and Richard Bennet discuss why a low-intensity counterinsurgency strategy seems to be working in the Philippines at The Weekly Standard.

The war on terror that the Obama administration is inheriting comes with a decidedly mixed record. Stopping attacks on the American homeland since 2001 has been the Bush administration’s biggest accomplishment. Turning around the war effort in Iraq, which was on the verge of failure in 2006, has been another signal success. But, as the Mumbai attacks remind us, the threat of Islamist terrorism has hardly been extinguished…

Almost forgotten amid these major developments is a tiny success story in Southeast Asia that may offer a more apt template than either Iraq or Afghanistan for fighting extremists in many corners of the world. The southern islands of the Philippines, inhabited by Muslims known as Moros (Spanish for “Moor”), have been in almost perpetual rebellion against the Christian majority ruling in Manila…

More at The Weekly Standard.

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