Having spent some time in the PI previous to Mt. Pinatubo, I have something of a soft spot for those particular brown people.
While yes, they are classic South East Asians, their culture has a hundreds of years of Catholicism grafted onto it. It's an odd mixture.
And we've shed blood with them. Something that they haven't forgotten.
All of that is good for them and I wish them well in their country, but none of that is in my racial or national interest. What this event shows is the consequences of little black budgets in places they don’t belong. One can argue keeping tabs on potential adversaries is a national interest, but if they are as you say, then the are not much of a threat to keep tabs on. So as an isolationist argument, the infinite dollars spent in third-world countries must stop.
