Bethlehem busting loose / More on the Americans

There is every doubt these days that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo can ever bring the ship into port. That was a doubt this writer expressed many columns back. We wrote she possibly couldn’t hack it all the way to 2004. This was not because she was incompetent or ill-prepared for the presidency but because the ship had caught fire and would eventually devour her. In which case, GMA would have to abandon ship or — like the intrepid and heroic captains of yore — go down with it full-bore and full-masted.

It had to take the first anniversary of People Power II to prove my point. EDSA Dos like EDSA Uno was one of those stirring, compelling events in our history where a massed throng of hundreds of thousands, without the use of a guillotine, severed the head of a president who had shamelessly betrayed a nation’s trust. The first commemoration then would have been a cause for national rejoicing. Fireworks should have lit the sky. Speeches of a piece should have rent the air in festive memory. The nation should have come together in a golden avalanche of pride reborn, honor redeemed.

That didn’t happen at all. And there lies the rub.

What happened was the once formidable EDSA throng which bellowed with one voice a year ago had vanished. In its stead, splinter groups emerged, raucous as packs of hyenas are raucous, shouting and screaming in so many voices, many anti-Gloria, many also pro-Gloria, more probably lost, bewildered and confused, if not that, sick and tired of it all. To make matters worse, much worse really, killings and kidnappings flared up again in Jolo and other places in Mindanao, police and Muslim civilians pouncing on and decapitating members of the pride of the Armed Forces — the Marines. In the horrendous bloodletting, MNLF followers of Nur Misuari reportedly used their machetes to disembowel the already dead Marines.

The foreign media certainly had a field day reporting violence in Muslim Mindanao, a reportage in high decibel that virtually laid waste all the hopes of Malacañang Palace that 2002 would be a good year, economically and politically. Add to that the arrival of hundreds of more special US forces to hunt down and decimate the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan under the guise of "joint exercises", if not afterwards the marauding guerrillas of the New People’s Army (NPA) and —- oh brother! —- you’ve got Bethlehem about to bust loose.

All this augurs trouble, big trouble.

No offense meant. But if history is to be our guide, the ongoing behavior and actuations of President Arroyo remind me of German president Paul Ludwig von Hindenburg, well-meaning really and perhaps sincere, but bumbling and befuddled in trying to unite a Germany wracked by ideological dissension, torn by clashing creeds and loyalties, split by hate, still bleeding psychologically from humiliating defeat in the First World War. And —- in the air —- one heard the initial utterances of Herr Adolph Hitler coming in from the shadows. He would save Germany.

I have an eerie feeling the Philippine equivalent of Sig Heil and the Nazi fascist ideology is beating its own drums here. I may be wrong and I hope I am. But that anti-GMA demonstration Wednesday of Puwersa ng Masa had the same guttural snarl, and all that was missing was the swastika. Profiled behind was the face and moustache of Joseph Estrada, who, like Hitler, invoked the masses and like Hitler again led the masses to perdition. I don’t like it when I see faces I had never seen before, faces of Linda Montayre and Rolando Lumbao, claiming to redeem the nation from the clutches of GMA in demagogic dribbles that could have come out of Mein Kampf. Who are these impostors really?

We have so many false Messiahs coming out. And this is understandable for the nation is in deep and desperate crisis. Not because of GMA or FVR or Cory Aquino and previous Philippine presidents but because the system is fatally flawed, rotten, a huge salmon belly up in the sands, its gills dilating in futile protest. I know it hurts when I keep insisting that People Power has played itself out. As they say in the vernacular, kumita na iyan. There are still many who worship at the vestals of People Power, intoning EDSA as they would a magic lyre, or a fairy godmother with her wonderful wand to cure the nation’s ills.

Venting popular wrath on GMA just won’t fly. She is not to blame. A nation is immersed in historic cycles, as is man in the great drama of birth, life and death. As is any society. Our latest two mini-cycles came, the first after the First World War which brought with it independence, the second after EDSA in 1986 which came following the assassination of Ninoy Aquino. In both cases, the Philippines failed to meet the challenge of modern times, or modernization if you will. We just didn’t have the tools. Or the dynamic culture. Our education, after a brief period of vigor, slumped. As a result, the era of "human skills" or "knowledge skills" with advanced technology and rapid productivity as its twin gods, completely escaped us. So we couldn’t produce to sustain a fast-growing population. From 20 to 78 million.

That explains our laggard economy, one of the worst in Asia, our grim and ghastly poverty, the utter ignorance and alienation of our masses, our exploding population, the criminal neglect of our cities and towns, our mounting garbage. This explains why out of this misery crime and violence stalk the face of our earth with increasing national pain, why the rich become more rich and the poor become more poor.

What amazes me is that our national leaders fail —- intellectually and morally —- to see the many faces of this national tragedy. So do the captains of industry fail to see it, as well as our economists, political and social scientists with very rare exceptions. Certainly our military cannot see it, for the blood of Ninoy Aquino remains on their hands, certainly not our police biggies with the reek of drugs in their swollen bank deposits. They may not see it or grasp it fully —- I mean the huddled masses of the poor —- but they feel it. Like the animals and insectivora of the forest, they sense it, they sense an approaching earthquake and are prepared to rampage out of their hedges and holes when it comes. Or even before.

I had a long and recent conversation with Jaime Cardinal Sin on the subject. And he immediately seized it as I propounded my concept of Freedom Force which he embraced with alacrity. This probably explains the endurance and longevity of the Philippines’ most famous Man of the Cloth who is perpetually on that road to Damascus, the blinding vision of the future always there to guide him.

The Church, the military, civil society. Together they hold the key to the future. Will they have the wisdom and the courage to rescue the Philippines when the whole thing explodes, get up the cliff with grapple hooks, shatter the present system and hit the road that leads to modernization with a soul? Because if we do not modernize, we die.

* * *

Lest this writer be misunderstood, let me say openly and candidly: We want the Abu Sayyaf terrorists to be crushed. The sooner, the better. And if we need the Special Forces of America to help accomplish the task in actual combat —- because we cannot do it ourselves —- so be it. I know there are some complications, legal and constitutional obstacles. And Foreign Affairs Secretary Teofisto Guingona is chafing at the bit because he was bypassed by President Arroyo in opening the doors wide open for the conspiratorial entry of American troops. Ostensibly for "joint exercises" which actually will operate in Basilan and rain death and damnation on the Abu Sayyaf.

The whole thing is a fait accompli. So the government will just have to look for a way to set aside constitutional and legal obstacles. If we have to swallow our pride, that’s okay by me.

Now listen. What I don’t want, what no decent Filipino wants, is for US involvement in Basilan against the Abu Sayyaf to open up a Pandora’s Box that will lead to the Philippines perching anew atop Uncle Sam’s laps and saying moo, moo and hoo-hoo in response to every American gesture. No, sir, we’re not going back there. If the Americans have a fancy to "recolonize" the Philippines, the Great White Father emerging anew to "guide" our national destiny, we might as well warn them at this juncture they will be playing with fire.

Sirs, we are not Afghanistan. You do not push us around again in the name of America’s war against international terrorism, which could be a pretext for you to stuff Pax Americana down our throats. I couldn’t care less about your Pax Americana, your imperial complex that the entire world will have to be remade in the image of America. After you have finished off the Abu Sayyaf -— git. Don’t even dare to think your war against international terrorism should include waging war on the guerillas of the New People’s Army. Or kidnap gangs like the Pentagon. This is none of your business. It’s an internal affair which we can take care of, thank you.

You poke your nose into our business outside of finishing off the Abu Sayyaf, and you’ll have civil war on your hands. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.