FVR says war is not an option

MANILA, Philippines - With the Mamasapano incident threatening to ignite a full-scale armed conflict in Mindanao, former President Fidel Ramos stressed yesterday that after all the foreign occupations, wars and rebellions, Filipinos should have learned by now that war is not an option.

Ramos made the pronouncement during yesterday’s commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Manila at the Memorare shrine in Intramuros.

Wearing a black beret with the insignia of the elite Special Action Force (SAF) in tribute to the SAF commandos, Ramos pointed out that as Valentine’s Day was set this year as the day to commemorate the Battle of Manila, now is the time to “make love, not war.”

“We must now coalesce and consolidate in one just global community where it is love not hate (that matters), it is friendship and cooperation towards a common vision that must predominate,” he said.

“This is the previous lesson that Filipinos today and all of those future generations must never forget – and that is: war is not an option,” he stressed.

Ramos, who is also the founding general of the SAF, said today’s battle cry should be “Love is caring, sharing and daring.”

He said that caring and sharing are easy enough to do, but daring requires more as it meant having “to give more than to take and to sacrifice (oneself) for the common good, which everyone in the Battle of Manila did, including the Japanese who were just following orders, and especially the civilians who were killed.”

The Battle of Manila, sometimes referred to as the Liberation of Manila – which lasted from Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945 – left the city in ruins and claimed the lives of more than 100,000 civilians – victims of massacre by retreating Japanese and of heavy shelling by advancing US forces.

Ramos described the month-long battle as “indisputably the greatest tragedy and the worst man-made disaster in Philippine history.” It marked the end of the three-year Japanese military occupation in the country.

“World War II cost us over 1.1 million deaths, out of a pre-war population of 17 million or one of the highest per capita casualty rate in the world,” the former President said in his statement, adding that it was an excessively high price to pay and the “worst sacrifice” for the sake of freedom.