A little piece of history

about our time in the Philippines.
Captain Cloman tracked down the killers and arrested them.

All night Cloman interviewed the suspects in order to answer the most important question: Why? He obtained no satisfactory answer. The Moros’ explanation [he wrote in his diary] “always came down to the fact that the soldiers were in their power and could be killed, so therefore they were.”

...
The American military did not want to enter into a full scale war with the Moro and exercised military restraint, however:

The Moros saw American restraint as weakness. The Moro understanding of Mohammed’s life story taught that a party engaged in diplomacy merely to buy time to recover from setback. Thus… return to diplomacy reinforced the Moro perception of American weakness.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?