Ready to see Americans fighting and dying for the Whitson Reef? The what? From Ted Galen Carpenter at antiwar.com:
When the last U.S. troops left the Philippines in the early 1990s, the prevailing assumption was that an extremely close military relationship between Washington and Manila would be just another relic of the Cold War. The decision by the Philippines Senate not to renew the US leases on Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base was quite emphatic. A thick layer of ash from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo made Clark unusable in any case, and public opinion in the country tended to both installations as a lingering, painful reminder of Washington’s colonial rule.
The mutual defense treaty remained intact, however, and US military and political officials soon sought to exploit Manila’s worries about the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to orchestrate a return of US forces. In particular, the Philippines’ government was deeply concerned about Beijing’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea – a stance that directly challenged Manila’s own claims. There were no longer any official US bases in the Philippines, but following the 9-11 terrorist attacks, George W. Bush’s administration responded favorably to Manila’s request to send a small contingent of troops – ostensibly to aid efforts to suppress militant Islamic rebels in the country’s southern islands. During Barack Obama’s administration, additional US military personnel began to return as part of Washington’s policy pivot to East Asia. They were given expanded access to bases that Manila controlled.
I remember Imelda Marcos and all the shoes, 3000 pairs if memory serves correctly.
The G. Gordon Liddy commercial with the postage stamp sized dollar is already here and the printing presses are about to burst into flames after $32 trillion since the COV-LARP.
That might slow the warmongers down but don’t get too hopeful.