We've heard this one before.

As you grow in life, or mature, we learn lessons on many things: buying a car, asking a girl out, a job interview - every day we learn something.

If our good friend is enduring something that you have gone through or at least now about, you would tell 'em, right? This isn't a moral dilemma - you help your buddy if it is at all possible. Just this past week, word arrived that talks have been on for a new agreement with the people of the Philippines on a troop-rotation. Rotation? We already have soldiers fighting in the south of the country (Oh, I mean anti-terrorist training stuff) and the Philippine government is already telling their people that it will be for a short time.

Let me see: China is making noise about the Spratly Islands,

Spratly Islands

has been for a short while now. The Philippines sent a ship that was run ashore to certify their claim to the island chain. Everyone in the area pretty much claims the islands and there is nothing on these islands, nothing.

I do recall a U.N. declaration not too long ago about being able to claim parts of the ocean if your continental shelf extends out to sea and where it does so, your country has exclusive gas rights. This is already causing a big issue in the Arctic: Russia is claiming the north pole due to continental shelf extension . . . Canada also lays claim and the United States simply ignores this convention.

Anyway, there could be a great deal of gas under the Spratly Islands, ergo, everyone wants those specs of dirt floating in the South China Sea. This is also a major reason why the governments of China and Japan are dancing around the Senkaku Islands

Senkaku islands

(China refers to them as the Diaoyu Islands) and the same argument also applies here: continental shelf really comes in to play here and this muddies up the claim for China.

So, what is the big deal with the Spratly's? Well, for one, it is called containment. It seems clear that American Foreign Policy is looking to get back in the game in Asia and their old buddy, their poor-old buddy has a potential claim to untold gas riches and they can't take on the big kid in the neighborhood: China.

As in the movie, "My Bodyguard," The Philippines have called on their old colonial buddy and WWII liberator to help fend off the neighborhood's big kid with another, bigger kid. All for the money, potential money.

More troops rotating into the Philippines? You guessed it: we are going there to support our colonial buddies and our troops are going into harm's way. We've seen this before and while the war on terrorism continues or winds down as some are postulating, we are positioning ourselves for the next engagement. 

Ask the Vietnamese about troops rotating in. Ask Europe about our NATO alliance to fend off the Warsaw Pact. Have no illusion, our troops are going in and will go in for a long, long time. This is just the start. To the people of the Philippines: we are coming to stay for a long time. You may wants us on that wall, you may need us on that wall . . . Can you handle the truth about American troops returning to the Philippines?

Images are borrowed from Wikipedia.

Edited on 8/12/2013 9:44 A.M.