Faceless face of terror / Lifestyle check? C’mon

Maybe the best and most realistic way to understand the terror now beginning to convulse the Philippines is to get a print-out of the New York Times editorial last October 20. This grand old dame of American journalism quotes George Tenet, CIA director, testifying before a congressional committee investigating the performance of US intelligence networks. Tenet, without mincing any words, virtually admitted US invasion of Afghanistan, although it toppled the ruling Taliban and destroyed the training camps of al-Qaeda in that Central Asian country, dismally failed to carve out the heart of this terrorist organization. The abject admission includes this: The mightiest military armada ever assembled, the US striking force, never got within spotter’s distance of the dreaded and bearded Osama bin Laden. He simply disappeared.

George Tenet stunned all of Washington when he pointed out al-Qaeda had set up a splintered terrorist group "that is just as lethal as the original." And if the threat to geographical America was bad before September 11, 2001, the day America shuddered like an aspen, it was just as bad today. "It’s serious", he said, "they’ve reconstituted, they are coming at us, they want to execute attacks". So paranoid has America become even our Winnie Monsod — who couldn’t harm a fly and can sing Yankee Doodle Dandy with brio – has become a security risk.

This was terribly damaging to an American ego that had many weeks ago announced that al-Qaeda was on the run, that Osama bin Laden could already have perished in the hills of Tora-Bora. That at any rate, Bin Laden, if still alive, was no longer in the cross-hairs of America. If still alive, he was critically ill, breathing probably his last in some accursed, bat-infested cave of East Pakistan. America had more to worry about. Saddam Hussein had to be exterminated soon, his regime in Iraq obliterated. America’s air might would darken the skies over Iraq and an invading Army of 200,000 comprising the best of US combat soldiery, would root out all the accumulated rot of the only country in the world today threatening America with weapons of mass destruction.

Everything sounded simple enough. In place of Bin Laden, Hussein.

Until just last October 12. This was when one to three car bombs exploded in Bali, killed about 190 persons, most of them Australians, wounded hundreds of others. Within days, five lesser bombs exploded in the Philippines, largely Zamboanga and Metro Manila, killing five, wounding scores. Then it happened. Fear rippled up and down the nation’s spine. Cold, clammy fear. The nation’s intelligence agencies were blamed. Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes led the outcry saying that those who didn’t think intelligence was to blame "should have their heads examined". Everybody was in an upchuck. President GMA said we shouldn’t be bullied "by few troublemakers with limited capabilities". A congressman got himself headlines by proposing GMA declare a "state of emergency". Five suspected Abu Sayyaf members were presented by GMA, as usual with a roll of drums, as behind the Zamboanga City bombings.

Where is all this hubbub leading to?

Will it disappear like a bad dream? Were the bombings sporadic just like the Dec. 30, 2000 five-site bombardment in Metro Manila? Will the bombing tempo continue? Now you have it. Now you don’t. Or will terror, constant terror, unremitting terror now become a permanent feature of our lives, increasing in frequency, claiming much more lives, tearing up our social fabric some more, dangling a grenade in the face of our democracy, inciting the Left to engage in more raids, goading the Right, meaning the military to eye power at the very top because the political center may not be able to hack it anymore.

It is when I talk or speculate like this, when I envisage a future fraught with a hundred dangers, that some readers, including some friends, depict me as the unwanted ancient Greek messenger bearing only bad tidings. Ergo, the messenger should be executed, for he spreads only dark and turbulent clouds and does the common weal great injury.

Let me then set the score straight.

Almost everything I have predicted so far in this column has come true. The trouble does not come from this writer. It comes from the Filipino. He sees the world through rose-colored glasses. The glass is never half-empty. It is half-full. Tomorrow is another day, and it will be a better day. We’ll survive all of this, don’t worry, Filipinos are survivors. God will take care of us. Poverty? Graft and corruption? Crime and violence? Kidnap for ransom? Failure of leadership? That will pass. All that will pass. All we need is a new batch of good leaders, new elections, and all our troubles will disappear. Don’t be too impatient. One day God will lead us by the hand and you’ll see. You’re too depressing, Teddy Benigno, you exaggerate things. Get lost.

So it has come to that.

I am afraid we now live in a country where the blind lead the blind. The only thing that can make us progress is knowledge. As the bible says, the truth shall set you free. And yet we avoid and even disdain knowledge, particularly knowledge that contradicts the way we look at the world, at ourselves, our society. And so when Transparency International categorized the Philippines as the 11th most corrupt country in the world, we had to look for excuses. The survey was not based on ascertainable facts, figures and statistics. It was based on the testimony of foreign businessmen and traders, others, who had done business in the Philippines. And they could be wrong or biased.

And so even this, we Filipinos might eventually shrug off.

And so I say that if we cannot get out of this dismal, dismissive culture of ours, we are a doomed nation. I see the Philippines in a much better perspective today. We are a failed, close to a collapsed democracy. We are struck in a cultural quagmire where our dominant religious faith – so many swear – inculcate in the Filipino infinite patience, the endless capacity to bear pain and suffering. We must obey and submit, surrender almost everything to Divine Providence. Where in many other countries, culture is the main explosive force for change, progress, economic prosperity, the good life, our culture has the Filipino stuck in primal ooze. And so what if we suffer physical of material pain? Poverty and the poor, say many priests, we have to love them. Heaven awaits, paradise. Eternal happiness, the light of a million angels, the enchantment of never-ending song.

I must warn the nation again. What we are going through now is just kindergarten stuff. The whole world heaves. Wait until America swoops on Iraq sometime this year or very early next year. Call me anything you want, but all of us will be three sheets to the wind as the Ark capsizes.

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One never really knows whether President GMA is for real or just putting on an act. After the Transparency International designated the Philippines the world’s 11th most corrupt nation (among 102 nations), GMA ordered a lifestyle check on top government officials, from cabinet members to bureau directors. The threat here is if found guilty of living beyond their means, the erring officials will be cashiered, shamed, and pastured to the Luneta with only a fig leaf on.

I suggest she start with her Man Friday Dante Ang. He is the startling reincarnation of Jose Avelino (did I get the name right) who during the palmiest days of Elpidio Quirino entered the ranks of the Immortals by twirling his cigar and asking one and all in arrogant tremolo: "What are we in power for?" Dante Ang claims to be nonplussed by all the flak he is getting. Yes, he wants to be rich, the faster the better and what is wrong with that?

Well, for one, the nation grovels in poverty. Tens of millions hardly get two square meals a day. President GMA is hard put to making any dent on poverty, has asked everybody to close ranks, sacrifice, for in her own words, poverty is the ultimate terror. So in just the twinkle of an eye, Dante Ang acquires a passel of properties, a major publication and a bank among them. The guy does not see anything wrong. Indeed, what is he in power for?

GMA increased the ante, saying even First Gentleman Mike Arroyo is not beyond a lifestyle check. That I gotta see. If Dante Ang and Mike Arroyo survive the check, then everybody in Malacañang does. And so would Mark Jimenez, who juggles a couple of mansions in each hand. So would the members of Octopus Incorporated, namely the Messrs. Tony Carpio, Pancho Villaraza and Nonong Cruz who reportedly have a corner on all major appointments approved by Malacañang. I do wish GMA acts and decides with more prudence and propriety. In this country which is the 11th most corrupt in the world, nobody in power would survive a lifestyle check and GMA knows it.

Why she engages in this fancy abracadabra is beyond me. In so short a time, so many brickbats have been thrown against her. It’s time she reversed course.