Only one word can describe the stupid idea of live TV coverage of Erap trial – ‘nuts’

Armed Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan is right. He’s no arm-chair general but a seasoned combat commander himself. (He once led the 101st Brigade in Mindanao, which included serving in Basilan, Zamboanga and other "war zones" in Mindanao). When Adan told reporters last Tuesday that the three Abu Sayyaf hostages, the military believes, are being "kept" in any of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) camps set up in the Basilan towns of Maluso, Sumisip, Tuburan and Tipo-Tipo, he wasn’t bluffing.

There’s no doubt that the Abus and the MILF are in alliance and have long been working in concert with each other. The fact is that I’m surprised that General Ed Adan, as official AFP spokesman, has finally expressed this so firmly and categorically. For almost a year, in order not to rock the boat and capsize the administration’s misguided efforts to avoid provoking the MILF and observe the naive "ceasefire agreement" signed in Kuala Lumpur by retired General Eduardo Ermita, the presidential consultant on the peace process, and Jess Dureza, the presidential assistant on Mindanao affairs, our harassed military has been painfully circumspect about discussing the Abu Sayyaf-MILF collaboration.

Yet it has clearly existed for many years. Now that the "gloves are off", it’s time generals, other officers, and our troops got tougher with the MILF, instead of being forced to virtually grovel every time the MILF’s chieftains or spokesmen complained that our government’s forces were violating the "ceasefire".

Would this not be "expanding" the war? That’s what the critics and peaceniks, including Ermita and Dureza, can be expected to cry out in anguish. The truth is that the war never constricted: the MILF, even after Camps Abubakar, Bushra, Rajah Muda, and their other strongholds were overrun about two years ago by our army, never abandoned their basic struggle. They remain dedicated to overthrowing the government, establishing an "Islamic State", and recovering control of their former strongholds.

The fact that MILF cadres, by the organization’s own admission, are already in Basilan in force (they claim that about 2,000 or more of the 10,000 MILF cadres are on the island) speaks volumes about their intent. They’re determined to thwart the military’s moves in Basilan – which includes the offensive to crush the Abu Sayyaf.

All that talk about "rescuing" the Burnhams – with our own poor nurse Ediborah Yap’s name being added as an afterthought – is self-defeating. Of course, our hearts go out to the Burnhams and Mrs. Yap, but in battle there’s only one objective: to defeat the enemy. Rescue missions, as demonstrated in the movie Black Hawk Down, usually end up in disaster. And I mean disaster for the military men thrown into the mission as well as the subjects of rescue.

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There’s a lot of publicity surrounding the new movie starring Mel Gibson, We Were Soldiers, about the first major engagement of Americans thrown into combat in Vietnam.

Elements of the 7th Cavalry under the command of Lt. Col. Harold Moore (Mel Gibson, of course) in the movie ride helicopters into the Ia Drang Valley in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, in November 1965. In those highland jungles, 450 American have been surrounded by nearly 2,000 soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army. Over the following three days, losing 79 men in the bitter fighting, the Americans "win" in the field, but the next day the North Vietnamese come back in force, and as they retreat from terrain they thought they’ve won, the Americans lose another 155 men. The Americans have fought valiantly, but, in the end, the North Vietnamese always retake in the darkness what the Americans could not continue to hold.

Here’s the entire story from correspondents who’ve covered the broad picture (most of us were down south of the "action" at that time, not on the actual scene). The battle began in mid-October of 1965, when four North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regiments encircled and attacked a US Special Forces (yes, "Green Berets") camp at Plei Me in the Ia Drang Valley, which, by the way, is near the border with Laos.

It was on October 27, or more than a week into the siege of the Special Forces camp that the first units of the 1st Air Cavalry Division (better known as the "1st Air Cav") descended by helicopters to save the camp. They weren’t given any time to savor their "victory", because the Air Cav paratroopers had to fight a series of tough running battles all the way down the valley, which lasted till mid-November.

The Air Cav "calculated" that they had killed 1,800 NVA cadres, but when a check was subsequently made, the "bodies" discovered didn’t come even close half the number. The Air Cav elite forces lost 55 helicopters in those running engagements.

That’s what happens during a rescue mission. After all the tears, blood, effort and gallantry, the enemy doesn’t really get defeated.

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Speaking of the movie, there’s already been a great deal of hype about it, and I can predict it will be a huge success here where Pinoys love a good bakbakan action flick.

But I think the most eloquent review of it came out more than a month ago, in the February issue of Esquire magazine.

In an article cover-headlined MEL GIBSON Goes to War Again, writer Charles P. Pierce says in one of his concluding paragraphs:

"The best scene in the movie is the last one. Night is falling over the battlefield. The Americans have captured the field. They have won the day, and one of them has left behind a tiny American flag, stuck in the stump of a shattered tree. But it is almost night now, the Americans are gone, and the North Vietnamese are back, hundreds of them, drifting down through the darkening valley, fading out of sight, everywhere and nowhere at once. An NVA officer plucks the flag out of the stump, ponders it for a moment, and then replaces it. It is not a gesture of contempt. It is more heartbreaking than that. It honors the heroism of the Americans in a way that emphasizes how little that heroism will have to do with the outcome of the war."

"Are we, our nation, in a similar position now? Winning the day only to lose the nights? Does it matter how many flags we plant, and where, if the enemy is everywhere and nowhere at once, as we are put on high alert and then told to go to the mall?"

It may be a movie that hymns heroism – but it also tells of frustration. Pierce sees it in his own cynical but poetic way as a parable for our times. He concludes his piece with the lines: "We are all guerrillas now, fighting in the deep shadows of who we are, as individuals and as a people. And when we capture the field and win the day, when we plant the flag in the noonday sun, what happens when night falls? What moves, everywhere and nowhere, across the darkening face of the valley that we thought we’d won?"

Such deep introspection, the way I se it, always comes post-war. When men are embroiled in battle, they don’t have the time, or the luxury, thank goodness, to indulge in such philosophical reveries. The time is here and now. The bullets whizzing in are addressed: To Whom It May Concern. This means, YOU! Pay attention.

I loved the poetic emotion of the Esquire piece. but it was a relief to pick up the April 2002 issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine, which – while it also featured Mel Gibson on its cover and We Were Soldiers Once as its blurb – ran as its lead cover-article the story: "AMERICA AT WAR: PHILIPPINES."

The author, Frank Hopkins, in typical "soldier of fortune" fashion, blasts away with a blood-and-guts style opening paragraph: "There have flashed across the radar screens of civilization some true renegades, swaggering punks who kidnap innocent hostages and rape them, behead them (and then attempt to sell the video tape to CNN), or barter them for millions in ransom, as suits their bent-headed service to ‘Allah.’ Judging another man’s relationship to his Creator is risky journalism, but we feel safe in saying that should the planet be so fortunate that those renegade scum be martyred, their souls would not be claimed by the Allah of Mohammed."

Sus, that’s the good old American way. That’s the way the West was won. ("The only good Injun is a dead Injun!") Is that how the East will be won? Perhaps. There are no poets left in Basilan these days. Only fighters – and survivors.

Let’s get on with the war.

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The idea being touted anew i.e. that the coverage of the Sandiganbayan trial of ex-President Joseph Estrada be covered "live" by radio and television, is screwy. Do we need another circus? The nation has been distracted long enough by political fun and games, and has been, since Day One of the glorious Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration, unable to get back to work.

Will live TV coverage of the "show" serve to humiliate Estrada further – or, the opposite, ensure him a fair trial? My view is: Neither of the above, Such a move will only reinforce the demented concept that everything governing the life of our nation is a "spectator sport." Sure, everybody enjoyed watching the impeachment trial in the Senate on television. It was smugly pronounced to be proof that our democracy was alive – and in action. Now, a feeling of inertia and ennui has set in. Enough is enough.

It’s bad enough that ex-President Estrada is already loudly alleging that he can’t get a fair trial and proper justice from the Sandiganbayan and our justice system. It’s even worse that provocateurs are out there in the barangays fomenting another "uprising", spreading cash and promises around to whip up a repeat of the May 1 "labor day" assault on the Palace. It’s insane for "pro-Erap" agents to believe that they can mobilize enough masa momentum, and throw into the fray enough muscle to overthrow the government, and bring the imprisoned Erap back, in triumph, to "power". Not on your life! Yet, the troublemakers can still muster enough annoyance power to disturb the peace, damage the economy, and deep-six any prospect of foreign investment. That’s where the danger lies.

The deposed president, in his frustration and desperation, may or may not have given his imprimatur to this last-ditch, madcap scheme. But it has to be nipped in the bud. It won’t succeed in restoring Mr. Estrada to his former . . . er, "glory". But it could succeed, deplorably, in derailing our trajectory – if only temporarily – towards progress. That would not only be a crime. It would be worse – an act of stupidity.

As for "live" radio and TV coverage, it’s high time we realized that life is a serious business, not a teledrama, vaudeville, zarzuela, or showbiz.

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It was, as a matter of fact, Estrada who first opposed the petition of Justice Secretary Hernando Perez for the Supreme Court to permit such a coverage of the anti-graft court proceedings. The High Court denied the Perez petition.

In his ponencia of the 8-6 decision of the Supreme Court, Justice Jose C. Vitug emphasized that the proceedings must be devoid of histrionics which might detract its basic aim to ferret out the facts free from improper influence, with a decision finally to be decreed by a judge with an unprejudiced mind, unbridled by running emotions or passions.

In its ruling, the High Court had relied on a United States Supreme Court decision that said, "the television camera is a powerful weapon which intentionally or inadvertently can destroy an accused and his case in the eyes of the public."

I’m afraid that those who’re now advocating live TV and radio coverage once more are falling, without their realizing it, into a trap. They are reinforcing the ploy of the deposed chief executive by which he claims he cannot get a fair trial from the Sandiganbayan, so he has to bring his case to the public.

That’s what that live coverage would accomplish: Divide and conquer. Let’s stop this divisive idea in its tracks.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . I apologize for publishing the wrong figure in yesterday’s column. The US death toll in the five-day Operation Anaconda in the snow-bound mountains of eastern Afghanistan came to eight US soldiers killed (not 20) and, by last count, 40 wounded. The units, engaged in that "end-run" battle which involves 2,000 Afghan and coalition troops against hundreds and possibly thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda hold-outs, are the US 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne or 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR).