A never-ending cycle of revenge

A gunman walked up to Israeli Tourism Minister Rahimin Zeevi the other night on the 8th floor of a hotel on Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem where he lived and pumped four bullets into his head. There goes tourism!

The fact is that Zeevi, a hardliner, had just resigned from the Cabinet of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in protest over the voluntary withdrawal of Israeli troops from Hebron and other West Bank areas in an effort to restart the "peace process."

Anyway, the killer got away. How this could be possible in such a tightly-guarded country as Israel is difficult to imagine. But hey! After watching such slambang movies as Air Force One in which US fighter jets "scrambled" into the air were poised to shoot down the American President’s own plane which was speeding with terrorists on board and a full load of explosives towards the American mainland, who would believe two huge commercial jets from Boston’s Logan airport, scheduled for California, make a sharp left turn and head for New York City without being intercepted? How could these planes be permitted to crash into the Twin Towers without being downed by the same fighter aircraft? A third hijacked plane had only a short way to go, from Reagan Airport in Washington, DC to its target, the Pentagon, so the "too late" response can be forgiven. But only partially. What were the global satellites doing if not sounding the early warning that a wayward jet was speeding towards the Pentagon?

I guess it’s only in Hollywood that the heroes are handsome, the damsels fetching, and the combat pilots on full alert. If you were a fighter jockey, and no specific orders were given, would you risk rocketing to kingdom come a passenger plane with lots of civilian passengers on board?

The terrorists knew the weakness of the American system. By the same token, the Palestinian hit-man understood the bravura of Mr. Zeevi which prompted him to go to Mount Scopus without his usual bodyguards.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine crowed that it was responsible for the "kill." In its announcement, the Intifada group stated that Zeevi’s assassination was in "revenge" for the death of its leader in an Israeli missile attack last August.

Of course, the Israelis will retaliate. And so it will go on: The almost open-ended cycle of vengeance and retaliation. Unfortunately, PLO "President" Yasser Arafat does not seem capable of controlling the radicals in his own camp like the revolutionary PFLP, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. Nor can Israel’s Sharon put a lid on the Jewish zealots and extremists in his own country. As long as "blood debts" exist and the Lex Talonis (an eye for an eye) prevails, there’s little hope for peace in the Middle East.

Osama bin Laden must be laughing himself sick.

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President Arroyo is leaving today to attend the 21-nation Asia Pacific Economic Coopration (APEC) summit in Shanghai.

Surely she’ll be able to have a one-on-one with China’s President Zhiang Zemin and some other leaders. Among those calendared to meet with her is Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. A tentatively scheduled meeting with America’s President George W. Bush was canceled when it was discovered that the US Chief Executive could allocate "only 15 minutes" for such a closed-door session. Of course. We mustn’t act like eager-beavers or exhibit the simpering attitude of a job applicant.

In any event, President GMA is already scheduled to meet Bush in the White House at 11 a.m. on November 18. But, gee whiz. Even that is bound to be a brief meeting since Mr. Bush has somewhere else to go, and the task of hosting our Chief Executive to lunch has been given to National Security Adviser Condoreeza Rice. (Unfortunately for GMA there’s a conflict in scheduling. We hear Bush will be meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.)

GMA is, unless plans change, scheduled to leave Manila on November 17, which may indicate that she could "stop over" in Honolulu to be briefed by CINCPAC on the situation in Asia and the Pacific, and America’s strategy concerns, from Afghanistan to the war on terrorism, including the Abu Sayyaf.

I suggest that the President would be wise to first get such a "briefing" from Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the Commander-in-Chief, US Pacific Command (hence, CINCPAC). If she does this, when she goes to Washington, DC, she will have an idea of what the US military needs from us and what hardware and expertise they’re offering us, so she can discuss these items and get approval for her own ideas – when she confers with Mr. Bush.

Admiral Blair, who’s visited the Philippines a number of times, is a much-decorated officer who not merely graduated from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis but was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford University, England. He also served earlier (before taking over as CINCPAC on February 20, 1999) as a White House Fellow and as Chief of Naval Operations in the Strategic Studies Group.

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Before we leave the subject, let me point out that Blair is no fly-weight. His area of responsibility encompasses more than 50 percent of the earth’s surface (about 105 million square miles or 169 million kilometers). His forces are deployed from the West Coast of the USA to the east coast of Africa, and from the Arctic to the Antarctic, including the states of Alaska and Hawaii. This "parish" covers 16 time zones, so vast is its sweep.

The CINCPAC "covers" 43 countries (including our own), 20 territories and possessions. It co-exists with and may, in an emergency be squared off against, the world’s five largest armies: Those of the People’s Republic of China, Russia, India, North Korea and South Korea.

Under its care, incidentally, is the RP-US Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1952.

CINCPAC’s unified command includes about 300,000 military personnel, from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine corps., or something like 20 percent of "active duty" US forces. This includes Infantry divisions and brigades from Washington State to Japan and Johnston Island in the Pacific; two Marine Expeditionary Forces (in California and Japan), the US Pacific Fleet (the Third Fleet in California, and the Seventh Fleet in Japan); four air forces in the Pacific; the Fifth Air Force (Japan), Seventh (Korea), Eleventh (Alaska) and the Thirteenth Air Force, which used to be based in Clark Air Base (Angeles) but it is now stationed in Guam.

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There’s already a problem regarding President Arroyo’s visit to the United States. The new US Chargé d’Affaires Bob Fitts is confused, according to his intimates. This is because four groups are telling him that they separately are representing President GMA in "planning" her trip to Washington, DC.

One of them is Mr. Bobby Romulo who, admittedly, is a close confidante of the President in diplomatic affairs, albeit without portfolio. (Bobby has already set up a dinner with former Vice President Dan Quayle on November 18.) The second group is that of Presidential Management Staff (PMS) Secretary Vicky Garchitorena. Almost forgotten, but also there, claiming precedent, is that of Vice President Teofisto "Tito" Guingona who, after all, is Secretary (but just barely) of Foreign Affairs. A fourth is the group of former Ambassador Donald Dee which claims they have been asked to finalize not just her visit but her meetings with American business leaders and investors.

Will GMA kindly put an end to poor Minister Fitts’ confusion by telling him WHO is drawing up her schedule? There are too many chefs in that kitchen, and, as the old saw goes, that will only spoil the broth.

Fitts, a New Englander from New Hampshire who replaced Mike Malinowsky (who went off to become US Ambassador to Nepal), is learning about our Latino-Malay ways the hard way and discovering that they have a bizarre Byzantine quality to them.

For instance, did you know that to date 200 businessmen have applied to go with the President on her US trip – anthrax or no anthrax?

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I guess, after dumping 2,000 bombs and missiles on already shell-pocked Afghanistan, the Americans had better stop talking about smart bombs and the technology to hit specified military targets without harming the civilian population. Remember, they’re the same guys who rocketed the Chinese Embassy in Budapest almost to smithereens during the "Kosovo War", foolishly believing it was a military target, not a diplomatic establishment. (Was Beijing furious!) But how did the US warplanes have made such an awful mistake? It was sheepishly claimed, afterwards, that the CIA had drawn up a wrong "map", although, it must be recalled, the American Ambassador to Yugoslavia and the US military attaché had previously attended some receptions and diplomatic parties in that very same building.

When the US Air Force hit an Afghan village "by mistake" and killed many civilians (the Taliban "claimed" 400 had been slain), many were still inclined to give the American aerial assault forces the benefit of the doubt. The other day, however, a US aircraft attacked and set ablaze the "International Red Cross" warehouse in Kabul, despite the fact that a huge Red Cross had been painted on its roof to proclaim its identity and neutrality. A large portion of the Red Cross’s food supplies housed in that godown were destroyed by that error – the pilot afterwards mumbled that he had spotted Taliban military vehicles moving around the edifice and had jumped to the conclusion that it was a military headquarters. Sanamagan. I thought the Americans were supposed to send $320 million in food aid to the starving Afghans, not wipe out their meager hoard of food supplies. What’s the use of "smart bombs" when not all the pilots themselves are smart?

But what the heck. When you’re speeding along at Mach 2, how can you pinpoint a target even with your dashboard computer with consistent accuracy? That’s the trouble with techno-war. When you make a techno-error, there’s hell to pay.

With the US Air Force and missile-launching vessels running out of targets, we can expect the relentless barrage to end soon enough. What will the next phase be? With winter coming in a rush (in Afghanistan, winter begins on November 15th), there won’t be much time left to insert commandos or special forces units except on hit-and-run missions into Afghanistan.

British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon himself has warned: "Historically, we know that the civil wars that have plagued Afghanistan tend to close down in the winter months."

How about the war against terrorism and the Taliban? Osama bin Laden never sleeps, and can’t be expected to hibernate through the winter’s snows. The Americans, Brits, and their anti-terrorist allies can’t afford to sleep a wink either.