An invisible enemy

Karen Kelley, the new first secretary and press attaché of the US embassy in Manila, and Counselor for Public Affairs Michael Anderson arrived on the dot at noon for lunch in a hotel Wednesday, hours after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC.

Security was tight at the embassy but work was not suspended. American officials debated whether a farewell party Wednesday evening in Makati for Chargé d’Affaires Michael Malinowsky, which would also serve as a welcome party for Karen and new Cultural Affairs Officer Thomas Kral, should push through. They decided that life had to go on, that allowing themselves to be paralyzed would have been a victory for terrorism. Michael, by the way, said some Filipinos have offered to donate blood to survivors in New York.

Karen is from Boston, where hijackers boarded the two planes that smashed into the twin towers. Reports yesterday said there was a terrorist cell linked with Osama bin Laden operating in Boston. I asked Karen if she was scared. She said no, and she did look unfazed. But she tried to change the subject over lunch, giving me glimpses of an America without the specter of terrorism. Our conversation, however, kept veering back to New York and Washington.

Filipinos are no strangers to terrorism. We are familiar with Bin Laden, who has connections with our most ruthless terrorist group, the Abu Sayyaf, and who is widely suspected as the person behind the attacks in America. Only last Dec. 30, we were speechless as we saw the gory handiwork of lunatics at the Light Rail Transit. We were horrified by the body count: 18. Compare this with the death toll in Manhattan, Washington and Pennsylvania.

It will take a long time before we can all settle down to business as usual.

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US President George W. Bush and the US Congress have agreed on military retaliation. The potential targets know who they are – leaders of Afghanistan have been trying to distance themselves from the attacks. I’m all for wiping out these creatures, who have been providing sanctuary to Bin Laden, who treat animals better than women, and who blast precious antiquities to smithereens. The other potential targets have also been getting sufficient signals from the United States.

This "battle between good and evil," however, won’t be as simple as World War II, where the lines between Allied and Axis forces were clearly drawn. This battle will inflict horrific collateral damage. You can’t pulverize Afghanistan without hitting women and children.

Reports said the hijackers were armed only with bladed weapons. How do you fight an enemy whose most potent weapon is his readiness to die? Cutting-edge defense technology is no match for guerrilla warfare waged by zealots who think they can achieve personal salvation by taking human lives. A suicide bomber is more lethal than an ICBM.

In recent years the worst damages on American facilities were inflicted by car bombs and terrorists in a small boat. Such enemies can be invisible. They used to focus on military targets. Now we’ve seen the thousands of civilians who have become casualties in a new kind of war. No, we can’t go back to business as usual any time soon.

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Like many Filipinos I have relatives in the States. When I saw the breaking news on CNN Tuesday night I didn’t think about them at first. What flashed through my mind were doomsday Hollywood movies, Armageddon playing out in real life. After watching the towers disappear from the Manhattan skyline I wondered where I had dumped my photographs with the towers in the background.

Then I remembered that I had relatives in New York, one of them studying in New York University, and in Washington and Pennsylvania. Suddenly it was no longer a movie I was seeing.

My relatives are safe, but at least one person I know in Manila is still awaiting word about her sister, who was working on the 79th floor of the World Trade Center.

What salvation can lunatics get from harming civilians? Are such mass murderers aware that they are insane? I’m afraid they’re unaware, and I’m afraid that after seeing the devastation they have wreaked on America, their thirst for blood has been even more whetted.

I shudder at the implications of a military retaliation against those behind the attacks on New York and Washington. But I also shudder at the consequences of allowing this atrocity to pass without fighting back. The world is entering a different war.