Support our troops with more than words

The average age of our troops is 44. Training backlog is estimated at 12 years. Brigades are undermanned and made to stay in a location for as long as 15 years. Vacancies for officers are 600 a year and the backlog is over 3,000 by now. They charge into battle zones without a basic bulletproof vest. Let’s not even talk about the modernity and reliability of their battle gear.

Of course we are horrified by the large amount of casualties in Basilan and Sulu. We are horrified that their intelligence is so bad they got caught in deadly ambushes. We are horrified that their officers end up pointing to each other and coming up with conflicting stories to explain the tragic encounters the morning after.

Poor planning and tired troops appear to be the key factors in the military debacles. It does not help that the Army chief had to be publicly ordered by the commander-in-chief to get out of his comfortable office in Fort Bonifacio and establish his headquarters at the battle front.

It is clear that what our troops need most now is not more privileged speeches in Congress nor brave orders for an all out war to avenge the death and barbaric beheading of the Marines. What they need is real support in terms of funds and logistics for them to accomplish the mission they have been sent out to the battlefields of Basilan and Sulu for.

I was talking with both Gen. Esperon and former DND Secretary Avelino Cruz during the launching of Gen.Almonte’s book at the Club Filipino last Thursday and they both told me there is a program now in place to upgrade the quality of our armed forces. All it needs is the money to implement it. Secretary Cruz estimates we will need an extra P10 billion a year for 10 years to make our armed forces up to basic standards.

That amount is not too daunting, according to Secretary Cruz. A significant amount of that can be sourced from savings coming out of the more transparent computerized bidding process in the defense establishment. The two civilian former defense secretaries, Orly Mercado and Nonong Cruz, made this their priority during their watch. I am told, this is now starting to deliver results. The rest will have to be appropriated by Congress.

But why are our soldiers so old? Gen. Esperon said they are working to bring the average age to around 30 but that will take time and money. Secretary Cruz said they are unable to retire more of the older rank and file soldiers because they don’t have enough money to pay for retirement benefits. Their budget for recruitment for younger soldiers is also quite limited. And after recruitment, their training budget is the next problem.

But Gen. Esperon said we shouldn’t worry that we are pitting the 40-year olds against the 20-year olds of the enemy dissidents. They have assigned the older ones to staff duty at headquarters. The running around in battlefields is left to the younger ones. What Gen. Esperon is worried about is that he does not have enough manpower to provide for enough training time. Every single soldier is being utilized in the field.

The American armed forces, Gen. Esperon explained to me, maintain an average age of around 30. But the difference between them and us, he said, is that American soldiers who retire in their late 30s or 40s are able to launch a second career in the civilian sector. Given our employment situation, our military retirees end up unemployed unless they happen to be influential generals who end up in the cabinet.

I understand from other sources that many of our better soldiers, officers and enlisted men, take on jobs as virtual mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are recruited as security officers that accompany civilian contractors providing services to the US military in the war zones of the Middle East. They make good money there and I assume better armed and equipped for the risk.

The most pathetic branch of our armed services is the air force which has become an air farce. Our military pilots get very little flying time if at all because we have no training planes available. We have a number of ageing helicopters that have a nasty habit of conking out while on flight. Gone are the days of the Blue Diamonds, whose performance every Independence Day always drew admiring ohhs and ahhs during my youth.

I asked Secretary Cruz how feasible is Ate Glue’s boast that she would lick the communist insurgency by 2010. Nonong just smiled… a very big knowing smile and asked me not to expect him to answer that question. I take that to mean that Ate Glue’s boast is a pipe dream and I don’t even have to quote anybody saying that.

The way I see it, we get the armed forces we are ready to pay for. The other problems we have with the armed forces, notably the short cuts we all suspect they are taking with regards to the leftist activists, cannot be addressed unless we give our brave men and women in uniform the honor and dignity that their noble profession demands.

That means, the time for speeches and grandiose promises is over. We have to put up and provide our troops the resources they need to get their job done. Otherwise, we have no right to put a single soldier in harm’s way if we cannot even provide them with a bulletproof vest to minimize the danger he faces. Let me ask our decision makers in Congress this: if you have a child who is a soldier, would you let him go to battle without the minimum protection of a bulletproof vest and a helmet that meets specifications?

I realize it is easier for Ate Glue and the politicians to visit the wakes of our soldiers killed in battle and be shown in front page photos commiserating with widows than do the right thing that would minimize the number of our dead. When I read about that young lieutenant who died in Mindanao, a fresh graduate from PMA and the son of a retired master sergeant, a little in me died as well. Would he still be among the living if he was properly equipped?

If we are to have an armed forces at all, we ought to do it right. Half measures for our armed forces are deadly and unfair to the brave men and women who die out there, on our behalf.

Floods

Unless the National Government undertakes a major program to address flood control in Central Luzon, the region will continue to lag behind Calabarzon for investors looking at locating manufacturing and other businesses in the Philippines. It took just one moderate typhoon to cause serious problems in Central Luzon, including Lubao, the hometown of Ate Glue.

After continuous rainfall in the evening of Aug. 8, even NLEX was flooded in an area that has not seen a flood in several decades. I am told that the rehabilitation of NLEX took into account recent flooding history. This is why they have significantly elevated portions of the expressway, particularly in the Candaba area, to protect it from floods.

But the flood this year was in a new area, in Bulacan. The flood subsided within a few hours, but it still stopped traffic in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 9. The expressway can again be elevated but it will not solve the problem of the towns below and vehicles will still have nowhere to go. A more comprehensive government study and action is called for.

Political whore

A congressman walks into a high class hotel and asks a smart hot babe: How much for a good time?

Hot babe: Sir, if you can raise my skirt as high as food and gas prices, lower my panties as low as your performance in Congress, get your dick as hard as the times, keep it as big as your pork barrel and screw me like you do your constituents, then, Mr. Congressman, this f—k’s on me.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]