War US can’t win / Estrada, quo vadis?

Not so long ago, we wrote in this space America had waged a war it couldn’t win - the war against international terror. The US may have pounded Afghanistan to rubble, but the war was only half-won. The prize catch had escaped. Osama bin Laden, Taliban supremo Mustapha Omar and other top leaders of Al Qaeda escaped with a swiftness that was mystical and magical. Despite the most awesome and destructive bombing from the air in all of history, the deployment of ultra high-tech weaponry, satisfactory victory had eluded the US.

And all the more is President George W. Bush in a war mode.

His state-of-the-nation speech framed the entire universe against an "Axis of Evil" comprising Iran, Iraq and North Korea. He said terrorism would have to be rooted out everywhere. He served blunt and blustery notice old rules and manuals of military and political warfare would be set aside. America and America alone would determine whom to hit and where to hit, whether the nation harboring terrorism objected or not. Europe, America’s main and historical ally, recoiled in fright from this language. China, Russia, Syria said they were "shocked" and "revolted" by a "US military policy review" that pinpointed them as potential nuclear targets for about 25,000 American nuclear missiles.

This is language that America’s present leaders cannot sustain. These are threats that dribble like tears from the beckoning eyes of the Statue of Liberty. They call on "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to come send their oppressed and suffering to America, beside the Golden Door. These are threats that do not understand the world of today from men who would reconstruct the world into a medieval empire where only one power - America - will dictate the rules and the culture of human conduct.

It’s time the US leadership rethink its position. Yes, the terror attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was abominable and unpardonable. The more than 3000 who died suffered a fate no different from the six million Jews incinerated in the gas chambers of Dachau and Buchenwald by Adolph Hitler and his goose-stepping Nazis. We can understand the anger, the outrage, the agony of the American people and their leaders. It does not ooze. It is an avalanche.

But let’s stop there. Osama bin Laden is not the entire Muslim world. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are not the ultimate symbols of Islam. The reality is much more complex. There is good Islam and bad Islam. There are the Shiites and the Sunnis, the secular Islamic states like Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia. There are the fundamentalist, America-hating, missile-equipped Islamic powers like Iraq and Iran. Within some Islamic countries, the good and bad elements co-exist. So what will America do? Stage a series of Operations Anaconda to flush out the bad? Shall the weak nations therefore be helpless before the American juggernaut?

The lines blur even more in the Philippines. The Abu Sayyaf is evil. Each Abu deserves to be half-buried in a mud-hill and exterminated by killer ants. But the Abus are predators, kidnapers, killers and bandits, not doctrinal spear-carriers of Islam. America would now classify Abu Sayyaf as an Al Qaeda tributary to be crushed to suit its war agenda. The Filipinos would love that of course. But it doesn’t stop there. Since it’s only the Americans who can define terror, and draw up a ledger of international terrorists, what’s to stop them from labelling the MILF (Muslim Islamic Liberation Front) as terrorists?. And after the MILF, the NPA communist guerillas?

They would then discard Carl von Clausewitz’s classic on war as an extension of diplomacy among and between nation states. They would adopt Martin Von Crewald’s new and startling doctrine that wars are no longer to be fought among nation-states but among tribes, ethnic and cultural organizations armed to the teeth, and yes by super-powers simply out to sink their teeth on "terrorists" wherever they are harbored. And when they do this, what happens to the old and sacrosanct doctrines engendered by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, that nation-states are sovereign? That their territories are hallowed? That international treaties are writ in stone?

America would violate all that in the name of a war against terror?

Somewhere along the way, George W. Bush will realize he has blundered. No nation, no matter how mighty, powerful and resource-rich can fight a war on shadow enemies all by its lonesome. Al Qaeda is nowhere and everywhere, crossing national borders, sending "sleepers" to the US to reside there respectably for years until they strike again. America will learn its nuclear bludgeon, its awesome air power, its missile-spewing drones and dragonflies, its spy satellites, its night-vision goggles, have limits. Hubris will infirm and erode America. George W. Bush’s telling China to imitate American culture, democracy and way of doing things during his recent visit, was arrogance of the first chop inflicted on the world’s oldest civilization. China will remain China. America will remain America.

The Philippines, alas, will remain "in America’s image." And that’s largely why George Bush and his nuclear-rattling consiglieri (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice) have chosen our country as the second anti-terror front succeeding Afghanistan. Would that this would lead to the alleviation of the nation’s misery. After all this country is inveterately pro-American, a lone oddity in an Asia that has long distanced itself culturally, politically, geographically from the Yankee. Because if it does not, and Americans will not now know to draw the line, the Philippines will be back to the "howling wilderness" it was when Blackjack Gen. John Pershing roamed the fastnesses of Mindanao.

After all, isn’t dire and grinding poverty the prime cause of humanity’s resort to terror? If that escapes America, then everything will escape America. You can bring down all the Afghanistans in the world, destroy Al Qaeda, hunt down and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. But if America does nothing to eliminate universal poverty, it is a sword slashing at the wind. So how can they win the war?

For this writer, poverty is the ultimate terror.

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I’m just about sick and tired of Joseph Estrada’s antics. Now here he is demanding that Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide resigns. Resign? Who is Erap to make this demand? Who is Loi Ejercito to waggle her finger at one and all and claim her husband is the victim of rank injustice? The trouble is a lot of media people, newspapers and TV-radio networks, not having anything better to do, are buying and hyping all this drivel, like bullfrogs in the pond croaking their delight.

Just hours ago, Estrada waged war on the entire justice system. When hours after, he realized the courts would not let him out of the country, he shifted from fandango to tango. He said he still believed in the justice system, but some justices like Davide, Art Panganiban, and Tony Carpio, not to mention the Special Division of the Sandiganbayan would have to be given the boot. Such gall! Or is he losing his mental marbles?

Erap would make fools of all of us, when he should be the one to sweat and smoulder on the spit. It is because he has allies and sympathizers in a number of places, proof positive that our political and social system is rotten to the core. It came as no surprise that Nene Pimentel, Edgardo Angara, blas Ople and Joe de Venecia would come rushing, four gentlemen whose specialty is trapo politics. Like Mary Magdalene, they would bend over with tears streaming down their shirt front to wash Erap Estrada’s feet.

His followers threaten to gather en masse in the streets today. Hah! The bulk are mercenaries who would demonstrate against Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio if they are paid P1000 each. If we needed proof that our democracy is a farce this is it. It’s a good thing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has finally stood her ground. Where formerly she waffled, the Muse of the Chameleon Countenance, now she has barred the door to Estrada’s leaving the country, and says the ball is in the judiciary’s court and must remain there. Fine. She is learning.

As for Erap, let me give him this counsel. The jig is up, my fine-feathered friend. And that is why I declined to honor your invitation for a one-on-one interview. Why me of all people when from the very beginning, I gave it to you in spades from brow to beltline, banged at you from sunup to sundown, roasted you over the coals. I suspected I would be made use of, and that is why I declined. I made two impossible demands, which was for you to issue a formal apology to the Filipino people, and return all the money you heisted. Of course, you refused and I expected you to refuse.

Settle back into your court seat, Mr. Estrada and behave. All these histrionics will get you nowhere, except to heap more contempt, more ridicule on your person. Ossa upon Peleon. I know you are deathly afraid of getting convicted and, if convicted, expiring by lethal injection. I don’t think the latter will ever happen. Any sitting president will extend you pardon. Even in America, President Gerald Ford granted pardon to Richard Nixon who had to forcibly resign for his many crimes in Watergate.

Nixon survived. You will survive. There is life after Estradagate.