Ally of the superpower

Israel’s Ariel Sharon is determined to starve out Yasser Arafat and won’t budge from the West Bank, the Palestinian leader is fuming and won’t call off his growing army of suicide bombers, and US Secretary of State Colin Powell is back home with little to show for his peace mission in the Middle East, after being snubbed by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Nope, the Arabs aren’t backing any second attempt by Washington to take out Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In the spirit of goodwill, the Arabs will probably support a similar US attempt against North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, who with Saddam and the Iranians make up the "axis of evil" in the mind of US President George W. Bush. But East Asia has been pushed out of the US radar screen by the crisis in the Middle East.

Elsewhere in the world, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is back in power after a botched coup backed clumsily by Washington. And in the United States itself, Americans are spooked by reports that Osama bin Laden is alive, perhaps not too well but highly likely to be plotting more mayhem.

Washington’s global war on terror at least found justification in a video footage broadcast Tuesday by Qatar-based station Al-Jazeera and by the Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcast Corp. yesterday. The footage featured Bin Laden and showed his al-Qaeda network claiming responsibility for the first time for the terror attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11 last year.

But Washington has been on the defensive amid reports that Bin Laden slipped out of the caves of Tora-Bora in eastern Afghanistan because of US failure to send troops to hunt him down.

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What has been achieved in six months? The Taliban is gone, the Afghan king is back home and al-Qaeda operatives, when they’re not leaking videotapes to friendly TV stations, are mostly on the run. But it’s like Operation Desert Storm: the Iraqis withdrew from Kuwait, but what we remember is that Saddam is still around. In the American offensive in Afghanistan, what we remember is that Bin Laden has not been found.

And now Sharon and Arafat, whose people are bound to annihilate each other, have told the Americans to bug off. It’s tough to be the world’s lone superpower.

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Closer to home, what has the American presence done in Basilan? Abu Sabaya and Khadaffy Janjalani have not been caught, and their three remaining hostages have not been recovered. Worse, there are reports that the State Department has given the green light for the payment of ransom to the Abu Sayyaf. What happened to the high-tech equipment for nighttime surveillance? Are the Americans bad trainers, or are our troops poor pupils?

Meanwhile, a Chinook has crashed during night operations, killing 10 GIs. An unmanned US spy plane has also crashed.

Oh well, at least the GIs are contributing to the economy of Basilan and Zamboanga (and don’t forget the troops in Central Luzon). Locals should try to corner the US troops’ requirements for bottled water and Off insect repellent, which are being flown in by the crate.

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With George the younger predicting a "spring thaw" and increase in terrorist activities, expect the Philippine-US "Balikatan" exercises to go on indefinitely. There won’t be a basing arrangement, but each Balikatan will be followed by another, and both governments won’t mind if each exercise requires its own terms of reference (TOR).

You can be sure each TOR will be approved, after a bit of tantrum by Vice President and Foreign Secretary Teofisto Guingona. After all, this government is even marking the centennial of the end of the Philippine-American war. If I remember right, the end of the war meant the start of full American colonial rule. And April 16, 1902 was when Miguel Malvar, the last of the Filipino generals fighting US occupation, surrendered to the Americans. Why are Filipinos celebrating a surrender? (It’s probably silly to ask that question when Pinoys pick George W. Bush in a survey as their most trusted person, ahead of any Filipino official.)

Are we really celebrating the end of a war, which the Americans by the way consider a mere Philippine insurrection, or are we celebrating the full start of our "50 years of Hollywood"? Probably both.

President Arroyo, who generally knows what the masses want, is speaking for the majority of the people when she expresses full support for the US-led global war on terror. Those regular anti-US (and now anti-Israel) rallies notwithstanding, most Pinoys are pro-American.