I think Duerte gets it. I was just watching an interview where he clearly defined this as a fight against a mindset --- with military means employed where needed.
Of course I agree with you that this is a very tough menace to control and the overuse of force has unintended consequences.
Well, I would say it is more or less align to a 1998 film (The Siege) When the US uses force to quell a terrorised city. In that movie Bruce Willis (who played a general) said
"The Army is a broadsword, not a scalpel. Trust me, senator, you do not want the Army in an American city."
Most of the film is factually incorrect, but this line alone, if only the top brass in the US heeded to this line, they would have not make a mess out of the two war they are fighting.
To fight an ideology, you never use brute force, the law is, you push, they push back, it's about how long you can applied pressure until, and eventually, boiled over. And when it does, then it is the time when you are at the most vulnerable.
To fight an ideology, you need to preform a "Surgical Strike" and by that, I don't mean you drop smart bomb on tactical target, but rather, you hit your enemy where it hurts most, not Command and Control centre, not Front line bunker, but rather the "value" of the "cause".
Punch line is, you fight ideology with an ideology, you need to make people think your idea is better than the one they are following, I am not saying to bribe or something, but I am talking about grassroots solution. such as education, negotiation, and most importantly illumination.
You fight them hard on battlefield, you may kill 1 or 2 of them, but then his/her friend, his/her relative may then join the cause, that mean you kill 1 or 2, ended up making 10 or 20 recruitment opportunities for them.
Duerte is a hardliner, he does not know how to delicately handle this situation, he can go around Marawi killing insurgent, but without a proper civil action supporting that, the more you kill actually make more enemy.
First of all, it is too much mercy show to the rebel/extremist that allows to build up time, recruit more fighters to shore up their strength. Their aim is very simple. That is to topple Philippine government or break free Mindanao island to be a complete sovereign state. By giving too much autonomous is a disaster waiting to happen. By thinking you giving these extremist more freedom and self government hoping they will turn away from breaking free from Philippine central govenment and turning away from extremist path is an extremely naive ideology.
What China is doing to Xinjiang and Tibet is exactly correct. Strict state control to align them with whole country government policy is the way to go. You have not seen any major attack in China for past 2-3 years in major cities of China. Most of the so called ISIS sympathies in China are send to firing squad. The cell breaks up and special martial law allow state to easily deal with these terrorist by locking them up and no rights for them.
Australia is also trying to reduce freedom in order to trade for safer country.
First of all, there still exist Extremism in China, just because it went underground does not mean it does not exist.
The problem between China and Philippine is different, one is an open insurrection, another is a closeted movement. Where one (in Philippine) enjoy support within their soil, the other (in China) enjoy support overseas.
China can still suppress the "resistance" does not mean the resistance went away, it just waiting on a chance to pound, we saw that all over Chinese History, every dynasty overthrown was because of either Political instability or People Revolt, don't forget People Revolt is how Communist gain their government in China just 67 years ago, so why do you think another People Revolt is not going to happen in the future??
On the other hand, Philippine is an open insurrection, which mean the tension has already reaches boiling point, where the local population is hostile against the government. You can only pacifies when the movement does not get any momentum, when they do, they will fight back when you push, this is why they have an open insurrection in Philippine.
And No, I would not say Australia have traded freedom for security, freedom is more or less the same, yes, there had been a lot more monitoring and there had been a lot more restriction on certain thing, but freedom is not traded for security, on the other hand we had almost none attacks, big and small over the last 20 years. A few shooting here and there, but then it does not go over the national average anyway.
