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Pinoy-Pulitika
Talk dirty war
by Miriam
Coronel-Ferrer
Any
moment now the US will launch its full firepower on Iraqi soil.
Our government will be there on the sidelines, joining the ranks
of the cheerleaders, seeking to be as useful as any bit player can.
Pathetic.
History lessons
on past US wars of aggression in the Philippines and elsewhere appear
to have no use in the policymaking of this administration. Even
simple calculations on how the war in Iraq will disadvantage us
seem not to get through. While it fusses about evacuation measures
for Filipinos in the Middle East, it is not doing anything to prevent
the catastrophe from breaking out.
The excuse
for this catastrophe-in-the-making is weapons of mass destruction.
Ironic, because the one who seeks to destroy is even more equipped.
Ill-advised, because war will not destroy but only unleash such
weapons at a very, very huge cost to all humanity and nature. It
will feed on insecurities that will only lead to more armamentation
and violent acts of reprisals from various partisan forces. It will
glorify the use of unilateral force over reason and multilateral
cooperation.
The excuse
is also deceptive. Because behind the avowed goal of securing humankind
from terrorist states and their weapons are issues of control and
influence over oil and the region, the US economy and domestic politics.
***
For US$100
million of military assistance, the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration
is risking life and limb of 1.6 million Filipinos in the Middle
East. Multiply these by a conservative 6 (estimate of family members
who depend on the OFWs’ remittances) and you get a bigger number
of people to be directly affected. See the difference where money
from remittances go – food, education, housing, clothing and other
basic needs.
These expenditures
go straight to the domestic economy and support growth. US military
aid, on the other hand, goes to arms, war machines and other materiel
– to be used to fight more wars against Filipinos on the homefront,
disrupting the economy.
For the pat on the back and extra attention, the Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo administration has been compromising our sovereignty and
national pride. It will allow the use of our airspace and even send
troops if asked. It has already invited actual interference in our
battlefields, a sad acknowledgment that our military cannot by itself
neutralize a homegrown bandit group – which some suspect is due
to lack of competence or even perhaps complicity.
It is truly
a hallmark of traditional Pinoy Pulitika that our leaders have chosen
to please others in every small way as only a puny state can. When
an American official comes and complains about the proliferation
of fake CDs and DVDs, the government immediately organizes a search-and-destroy
operation of these goods. Hinge the military assistance on the passage
of amendments to the anti-money laundering law, and the amendments
become government legislative priority. Clamping down on illegal
goods and money laundering are laudable aims – but why does our
government act so willfully only when prodded by its Significant
Other?
***
The message
from growing movements in the country and around the world is the
preferential option for peace. A recent survey by the Social Weather
Station and an earlier one conducted by Pulse Asia shows majority
of Filipinos prefer the country to stay neutral in the US war on
Iraq, and are against Philippine support for military action (70%
and 72%, respectively in the SWS survey).
Meanwhile,
another Pulse Asia survey on our unfinished domestic war showed
that people prefer to talk peace with the Communist Party-New People’s
Army (CPP-NPA). The survey refuted earlier claims by President GMA
that 90% did not want peace talks.
The same survey showed that 62% percent of Filipinos do not trust
the CPP-NPA. But this lack of trust does not contradict their preference
for peaceful negotiation.
Along with
the insistent prodding of civil society peace advocates, the survey
results seem to have moved government officials to reopen stalled
peace talks with the NDF. In late January, the President approved
the draft Peace Agreement with the National Democratic Front prepared
by the government peace panel and announced the revival of talks.
The new phase
was immediately cut on its tracks. Without seeing the draft, Jose
Ma. “Joma” Sison and Ka Roger Rosal immediately rejected it. Agents
of the CPP-NPA assassinated former NPA commander and CCP Central
Committee member Rolando Kintanar, sparking what could degenerate
into a bloody war of attrition among former comrades in the Philippines
Left, a situation some agents of the state are only too happy to
exploit.
Vicious language
and continuing violence do not support peace. Peace requires a single
line of march. Without this clarity in direction, there are only
motions that make people tired of the process, not because they
do not support peace talks but because they have lost trust in one
or both parties.
***
No doubt the
communist insurgency has recovered some ground it lost in the late
1980s and 1990s due to internal strife over strategy and tactics,
the lack of democracy, the purges, personality clashes, and the
intensified military offensives in 1987-1989.
The Armed Forces reported 9,388 rebels in the first half of 2002,
up from 7,670 in 1994 (but still less than the 25,000 figure in
1988). The same report counted 105 guerilla fronts, a significant
increase from the 46 in 1994.
The CPP’s gains
in the last few years can be attributed to the consolidation in
the ranks of the reaffirmist camp, efforts to rectify relations
with the masses at the community level, general disenchantment with
government, unemployment and lack of opportunities and options for
the rural poor.
For example,
an Inquirer report (May 2002, p. A13) cited the claim of the vice-president
of the Negros Oriental Federation of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries
Organization that 3 percent of its approxiamtely 4,000 members had
joined the NPA or RPA-ABB after tiring of waiting to own land.
But while the
CPP has not been short of societal and political crises from which
to build its revolutionary base, it is suffering from bad publicity
and a leadership insensitive to the public pulse.
For a long
time now, the CPP-NPA’s tendency has been to outdo the government
and AFP in baring its pangs. Unabashedly, it boasts of the damage
it can do, blind to the ruthless and unreasonable image it is creating
to the general public.
***
Many of us
don’t like terrorist labeling. But how does one make a good defense
when the accused keeps shooting himself on the foot?
To cite some
examples: When the NDF-NPA was declared a terrorist organization
in August 2002, Joma reacted by calling for the intensification
of warfare and threatening to blow up communication towers. While
Joma later denied issuing the order, the fact is, several communication
equipment have subsequently been blasted.
Globe or Smart
facilities are civilian objects which, under international humanitarian
law, should not be objects of attack. If these attacks were punishments
for not putting up with revolutionary taxation, then the CPP-NPA
are engaging in extortion like ordinary criminals. Revolutionary
idealism—or is it pragmatism? – have a way of distorting values,
justifying all acts in the name of the cause.
Christmas 2002
saw the shortest holiday cease-fire ever (four days) since 1986,
and with only the government declaring a self-imposed truce. From
Ka Roger Rosal, the usual rhetoric: cease-fire during the holidays
was impossible “due to the Macapagal-Arroyo regime’s outright puppetry
and its fascist and anti-people measures.”
If it were
to be true to its ideals, the CPP-NDF must undertake a serious “criticism-self-criticism”
– to use its lingo — to understand why it is doing poorly in public
perception. When the public, not to mention former brothers and
sisters in arms (who are not at all involved in counter-insurgency
but have pursued their aims of societal transformation through other
means), reacted harshly to the killing of Kintanar, it should not
brush aside the negative feedback by blaming, as one insider-friend
said, the low level of consciousness of the people. The notion of
‘false consciousness” has long been seriously questioned. More credit
should be given to ordinary people to think for themselves, and
discern right from wrong.
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