Buencamino does foreign and political affairs analysis for Action for Economic Reforms. This piece was Editorial in Today, 25 July 2004 edition.
ONE summer ago, President Arroyo went to Washington and signed up withGeorge W. Bush’s posse. Bush was so pleased by her gesture that hepromised arms for her own war on terror and money to rebuild everythingshe would destroy, with his gifts. Bush’s policy is not new.
After World War II, the US established a bank to complement a USforeign policy formulated from the following question: How could wehelp anyone rebuild anything if we don’t destroy it first? So the USnamed its bank International Bank for Reconstruction and Development(World Bank) and it has followed the American wake of destruction eversince—and not just through war but with even more devastating effect,through the cockeyed economic prescriptions that brought Argentina,Brazil, Korea, Thailand and Indonesia to their knees in the lasteconomic crisis that is still with us. Pushing up interest rates in arecession, how stupid can anyone get?
As a bonus for being one of the first to sign up for Bush’s posse, Mrs.Arroyo was pinned with a “major non-NATO ally” badge. The insigniaentitled her to special privileges—anything she wanted from any USmilitary junkyard and a seat at the table reserved for those who werefair but not white enough to be a “real ally.” She loved it and Bushloved that she loved it.
This summer, Bush, who has studiously avoided invading North Korea,finds himself in deep kimchi. Now, everyone knows Bush lied so he couldgo after the wrong guy. So now he says, “I only lied to you because Iwas also lied to; but rejoice because Saddam is gone and the good guysare in charge.”
Today, the world is sure about what it suspected all along: Bush is someone you don’t want anywhere near your loved ones.
Jay Leno made a joke straight out of the White House Sour GrapesDepartment. He said the entire Philippine contingent was so small itcould fit into a Humvee. He’s right. In fact, the entire Coalition ofthe Willing can fit on the back of a Texas pony, if you don’t count theAmericans and the Brits. But Leno, like the native journalists whoadore Bush, is way off the mark on the cowardice subject; the issue isnot who capitulates to terrorists but who is brave enough to stand upto Bush.
The native admirers of Bush say we have to prove ourselves “worthy” ofthe international community’s respect by staying with the posse, nomatter what it is chasing or why. They figure that someone else’s headis a fair price to pay to stay in the White House “special friends”list. Then, they recite verbatim the dogma that terrorists will tire ofbeheadings when they see that no one will deal with beheaders. Theyminimize the fact that there is a war going on, and the terrorists,like the Americans, are trying to kill everyone on the other side. TheAmericans equate Iraqi insurgents with run-of-the-millkidnap-for-ransom hoods. They are not; they are patriots, of aparticularly grisly kind.
Hostage-taking does offer attractive benefits to the weaker side in anyconflict situation like that in Iraq. The no-negotiation dogma believesthat removing the benefits will stop hostage-taking.
But it won’t. Whether the Iraqis kill their foreign hostages or getwhat they want for them—which is to get rid of all foreigners who cameinto Iraq on the heels of the American invasion—it is all the same tothem. And so the carnage goes on. (You have to be really stupid tobelieve that the American occupation ended with yet another acceleratedthough far more clandestine event, the June 28 “transition” ofauthority from the US to its lackeys in the governing council that isholed up in the C NN studios in Baghdad.)
And there is no connection between the so-called Philippinecapitulation to the Iraqi insurgents’ demand for anearlier-than-scheduled Philippine pullout and the subsequent kidnappingof other foreign workers. And that is because the next batch ofhostages taken were not Filipinos but Kenyans, Indians and an Egyptian.
The Iraqi insurgents also want to see the last of Kenyans, Indians andany other foreign workers who are helping to make the American militaryoccupation of Iraq more congenial by cleaning the latrines and doingother lowly, not to say dangerous, jobs that no poor American willstoop to take unless he ends up, like a lot of his lowly social class,in a federal penitentiary rather than in the US occupation force.Leavenworth or Fort Bragg. There would be a connection between thePhilippine capitulation to save Angelo de la Cruz and more kidnappingsif it was of other Filipino truck drivers or what-have-you. Meanwhile,the critics’ reaction to the Angelo de la Cruz incident was reminiscentof Donald Rumsfeld’s reaction to the Abu Ghraib torture report.Rumsfeld blamed the digital video cameras.
In sum, fellow natives, it’s not the terrorists, the hostage-taking, orthe beheadings that’s the problem. It’s the illegal invasion, stupid,and the savage resistance if spawned which will defeat the UnitedStates if it doesn’t use weapons of mass destruction on the Iraqipeople.
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