God makes a ‘comeback’ in post-attack America

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Those banner headlines about a "mystery virus" hitting six schools, the tale-bearers implying that these were Catholic schools not public schools, don’t mean that we in Metro Manila are under Islamic "terrorist" attack. It just goes to show how jittery everybody is these days.

Let’s lighten up. It may be just an old-fashioned flu epidemic.

If it’s any consuelo de bobo, many Americans all over the United States are in a state of paranoia, too. Even Dr. Harvey Kushner of Long Island, who’s completing a book named The Concise Encyclopedia of Extremism, Hate Crimes, and Terrorism, confessed to the newspapers that he is constantly on the alert to the arrival of strangers in his neighborhood (I guess particularly to guys called "Osama") and keeps an emergency stash of Ceclor, an antibiotic effective against Anthrax, in his pocket.

Everywhere, it seems, stores and outlets have run out of "gas masks", just in case those dirty terrorists launch a chemical attack on the country. It doesn’t matter that experts keep on saying that gas masks don’t help against nerve poisons, since they penetrate the skin and don’t require inhalation. The assault of the "enemy" by Sarin (the nerve gas used in the Tokyo subway "gassing" of 1995, or Tabun, or VX is expected momentarily.

They’re concerned, too, about choking agents like Phosgene, blood poisons like hydrogen cyanide or cyanogen chloride, viruses like those provoking hemorrhagic fevers (Ebola), smallpox (the way they wiped out the Indians in the Old West, incidentally), or bacterial agents like inhalation Anthrax.

Can’t blame the Americans for being worried. Whoever thought 19 men, armed with ceramic knives and cardboard cutters, could take control of high-tech super-jumbo jets and crash them like flying bombs into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon? The next wave may come by flying carpet.

* * *

I love Los Angeles. In its scruffier sectons, full of graffiti, cracked plaster, bums living in dirty lean-to’s and makeshift tents on the broken sidewalks, many of its Hispanics (mostly Chicanos) living in Barrios plagued by street gangs, its suburbs sometimes looking like Binondo or Sampaloc, its downtown area full of agencias de empeños or pawnshops (indicating that many Angeleños are either flat-broke or the shops are "fencing" for thieves and robbers). There’s a Japan town or "Little Tokyo", a Korean town, and a prosperous "Little Saigon", but nowhere can you find a "Philippine town." The site of such a town was picked out 15 years ago, but they’re still squabbling over how to develop it, and who would run it! Typically Pinoy, I’d say – sadly. There are hundreds of Filipino-American clubs and associations (everybody wants to become president).

Oh, well. There’s Goldilocks and Jollibee (what happened to Barrio Fiesta in Glendale?), there’s patis, bagoong, pinakbet, dinuguan, etc. Everywhere, from Cerritos to Carson City, and West Covina, and so forth, you’ll come upon "Adobo Country." They may not have unity, but our Pinoy brethren in this diaspora have visibility.

Flying in from chilly New York City, you experience a culture shock. It’s not just that your 60 degrees Fahrenheit melted to 80 degrees F (during the daytime), but it’s the lifestyle and change of mood. Anyway, whenever somebody did anything outrageous in the USA, they’d usually shrug in explanation: "It’s not surprising. He (or she) is from California!"

* * *

I’ll have to say that going through the security zone in New York’s JFK airport to board our United Airlines Flight 19 to Los Angeles (LA) was less difficult than I had expected. They didn’t strip-search us, nor was a National Guardsman with an M-16 standing by, eyes glinting as he scanned the passengers for bearded-types or those bearing the surname Bin Laden. (I kept my Afghan turban carefully out of sight in my checked-in suitcase).

They were more panicky in the Los Angeles Airport. We waited in vain for our friend and columnist Ernie Delfin, to pick us up. He arrived one hour and a half late, swearing, huffing and puffing. He had been forced to park 10 blocks away and had run all the way to tell us that private vehicles and cars were still not being permitted to enter the L.A. airport area.

We hailed a Yellow Taxi. When we were enroute, it turned out that the cabbie, who by the way looked suspiciously like a Taliban, didn’t know the way to our hotel. Would you believe? My nephew Sim Silverio and I had to direct him and show him the place on the map! "When did you arrive from Pakistan?" I exclaimed.

He turned around, almost missing the freeway and sending the drivers of two nearby cars into a swerve: "No sir, I’m from Armenia!" (That’s the Christian enclave stuck between Turkey and Russia.) I figured he might know the way to Mount Ararat, but he certainly didn’t know his way to Beverly Hills-Wilshire.

In desperation I fumed: "Do you know Rodeo Drive?" (Everybody knows Rodeo Drive, including, alas, our ladies). The fellow nodded. "Okay," I said, "just go to Rodeo Drive and turn right, then right at El Camino!" We finally got there.

I’m quite happy with my familiar hotel here, where I usually stay. The doorman and bellboys greet you by name. (They know I’m an Ilocano and don’t expect heavy tipping.) The reason I first picked it is because I’m a Julia Roberts fan, and this is where they filmed Pretty Woman.

* * *

Last night, former President Bill Clinton – unfazed by the fact that US Supreme Court had just disbarred him from practicing Law and had given him 40 days to offer a reason why he should not be permanently disbarred – delivered an eloquent speech on unity in our hotel ballroom. It was quite obvious, from the posh cars that flooded the driveway and the finery of the grandes dames, that Clinton has lost none of his charisma, and that the creme de la creme had turned out to listen to him.

President George W. Bush, for that matter, is riding high. His approval rating has soared: Everyone is lining up behind a "wartime President."

He has dispatched a third aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk to the Arabian Sea to join two other carriers already there, the USS Enterprise and USS Carl Vinson.

Each carrier battle group includes a submarine, cruisers, corvettes and destroyers. One carrier alone carries eight times more aircraft than our Philippine Air Force! A fourth carrier, USS Theodore Roosevelt, is in the Mediterranean and could be sent to the region, if needed.

The Kitty Hawk, it’s speculated here, could be utilized as a floating platform or launch pad for special forces or infantry units to attack any "target" in the region. This would make more sense than assembling all that fire-power – for what? Attack a primitive land like Afghanistan, the size of Texas, but containing only harsh desert or soaring, snow-clad mountains, full of treacherous mountain passes and honey-combed with caves? It’s ambush country.

The Brits – and more recently, the Soviets – got cut to pieces there. As one who covered the Vietnam War, including the incredible "Tet" Offensive, I can say the Americans have guts, but it’s endurance, savvy, patience, and indifference to death that succeed in the mountains and deserts, as well as in the rabbit-warrens and the tropical jungle. And winter will soon come to Afghanistan: A terrible season fit for neither man nor beast, only Afghanis or Pashtuns.

Yet, in anger and the memory of the 6,300 dead in New York, and 198 in the Pentagon, Americans are spoiling for a fight. They’re wearing t-shirts marked: "Revenge!" The US flag is flying everywhere, from posts, to shop windows, to cars. Neon signs proclaim: "In God We Trust; We Stand United." Even in Harvard, the usually liberal-minded, anti-Vietnam war involvement type students voted "yes" to the need for military action, with the caveat of course that they (the Harvard men) not be the ones to be sent to fight it.

Don’t laugh at the almost facetious proposal to send Philippine troops to help America out, when we can’t muster enough troops to send to Basilan. It makes better sense than it sounds. Right now, the USA is fervidly casting about for allies – and remember, the USA is our biggest trading partner. Sure, business has no heart. But in this crisis, when "payback time" comes, they’ll remember who was somos o no somos. Every red-blooded Filipino male in his twenties will, I predict, step forward to volunteer. (Think of the salary – in dollars, not rupees). If we have Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), why not Overseas Filipino Soldiers (OFS)? The cynical and the Leftists will sneer that we mustn’t be mercenaries – but a buck is a buck.

* * *

God has made a comeback in the United States. In a land which banned prayer in the classrooms, thanks to the objections of so-called Civil Libertarians, they’ve rediscovered God and prayer.

It’s strange. Every American President, on inauguration day, takes his oath of office on the Bible. On the dollar bill is inscribed the motto: "In God We Trust." It’s the slogan, along with El Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One) of the United States of America. Yet, they barred public prayer to God from America’s classrooms on the argument that those who didn’t believe in God should not be offended. Now, everybody it seems believes in God. As the World War expression went: There are no atheists in the foxholes.

God is going to war here. The Muslim fanatics and terrorists think they’re doing God’s will (Allah Akbar!). Also, they’ll be rewarded with 44 virgins in Paradise. In America, as they sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, they pray for God to be on their side – to comfort them in their grief, to be in the first line of attack in the hour of retribution.

Many never thought it would happen: An America almost solidly united. We hope it’s not the first step to Armageddon.