Philippines to U.S.: "We only do windows!"

"Hostage Is Freed After Philippine Troops Are Withdrawn From Iraq," by James Glanz, New York Times, 21 July, p. A12.

Old line that a colleague of mine at college, Bradd Hayes, loved to use whenever he talked about the military's reticence to do post-conflict nation-building: the U.S. military doesn't like to "do windows," meaning all the piddling little stuff involved in post-conflict security generation. The Pentagon's line was (and for many, still is): We do smoking holes and nothing else!

Well, the Philippines is saying to the U.S. and the rest of the Core that while they're willing to do windows as a commuting labor force that can rapidly come into bad situations and provide lotsa "shoes on the ground," they aren't willing to do much of anything beyond those "windows." If you want to drive the Filipinos out, all you need do is take one of their people hostage and the entire country will back down immediatelyópulling out all of their (admittedly puny) security contingent. And they will do this proudly, as the president rejoices in her one freed Filipino worker even as American troops die by the day keeping the rest of her workers safe there.

But, frankly, that is the realistic limit for the Philippines: while their global commuting workforce can be counted upon to provide labor at a moment's notice anywhere inside the Gap, the U.S. can't expect them to play any serious security role there. Filipinos are therefore logically considered the foot workers, but not the foot soldiers, in any Core-wide strategy to shrink the Gap.