Posted on 01/14/2016 1:10:20 AM PST by Berlin_Freeper
The Philippines is set to offer the US military use of eight bases, a military spokesman has said, after the country’s supreme court upheld a security agreement with Washington forged in the face of rising tensions with China.
The facilities include the former US Clark airbase and air and naval facilities on the southwestern island of Palawan which faces the South China Sea, the focus of territorial disputes with China.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
I suppose this is good news for both defense and local economics.
Our security concerns meant nothing to them, so they kicked us out. But when their security concerns are an issue, they want us back. Screw ‘em. We don’t need ‘em.
VERY good news
I don't think the world has the time to intellectualize the importance of a strategic position on the globe
China is building it's own country out in the middle of the ocean, just in case you hadn't noticed.
I guess their own private little venture didn’t pan out for them.
Offering 8 military bases. That’s like the whole country. Money must be tight over there. I think their chief export is service labor now.
We don’t need them.
You let your friends spit in your face? I pity you.
Well said
Exactly, they should have thought before showing our ass the door back then.
It seems to me you are right.
Just yesterday I had a conversation with a young lady from the PI, and was a bit surprised at how anti-China she was.
They are starting to feel a bit threatened there.
Or continually putting up with drunkards that rape them?
This thing called life is a relatively simple thing to be ... as long as evil is held in check
There's an islamic faction in the Philippines that could use some American counter-punching, and neither the Filipinos nor Americanos are still in the 1960's
It seemed to me at the time it was more about empty national posturing and blustering in the face of the big bad Americans than it was about protecting the purity of their daughters. Their national pride was hurt.
Time we demanded more from our partners.
This deal is unlikely to be completed until after 2016. An incoming Pres Trump should negotiate that the land, in exchange for some $$$, is permanent ceded to the US as US territory in perpetuity, with US law and jurisdiction being applied within its boundaries.
The world can no longer play politics or wallow in meaningless miffdom
Trump has placed an attitude on the table and a lot of folks are picking up on it
The Philippines have their own Trump in Rodrigo Duterte ....
Things are changing .. VERY rapidly
It's shit or get off the pot time
At the time, public opinion polls in the Philippines strongly supported retaining the bases, as they always have. The public was and still is intensely pro-American. I was there at the time and I recall the controversy.
The Philippine leadership did not want the bases, or at least it was conflicted. It is dominated by the intelligentsia and the upper class, not the common tao. Nationalist hangups and psychological contradictions have always been greatest in that class.
The US, at the time, did not really need the bases, as the post Cold War drawdown was getting under way. East Asia was as peaceful as anywhere could be, and there were no obvious threats anywhere. Two very large, very expensive foreign bases could be abandoned without the politicking it would take to close comparable Stateside facilities. The US government had absolutely no interest in making deals or fighting the political battle to keep them, and also deal with rebuilding them in the midst of two ruined provinces.
The Philippine problem (one of them anyway) was and still is that democracy doesn’t quite work there.
“Offering 8 military bases. That’s like the whole country. Money must be tight over there. I think their chief export is service labor now”
Tight money , and oh, now that you are here could you help us with our little Islamic terrorism problem?
The way things are nowadays in our military, the ladyboys will certainly get more business.
Not only that but if not for us the Filipinos would be Japanese today. We suffered somewhat of a defeat at Bataan, but the United States came through at the end led by General Douglas MacArthur.
Lot of that going on around the world.
Very peaceful the mooslimes not are they.
Exactly what you said.
They greatly harmed their own economy too, by kicking us out.
Thousands of Philippinos were made unemployed by that dumb move.
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