Will Dubya have to bomb Berlin and Paris, before hitting Baghdad?

When we were kids, we knew Baghdad only from the fairy tales and the Hollywood movies. You know: The Thief of Baghdad; Sinbad the Sailor; Arabian Nights; and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

The Arabian nights have become an Arab nightmare for America, and a big bother to us in today’s actual not visual reality – not the least of our worries being the 1.4 million OFWs or overseas Pinoys and Pinays living and working in the zone threatened by the coming war’s fall-out.

I say "coming war", not "possible war", because if the United States has already moved 110,000 of its soldiers, sailors and airmen to the Gulf – plus four aircraft carrier battle groups already in situ, with a fifth going full-steam towards it – Washington DC can’t recall and withdraw them without the expenditure of big bucks, and, worse, a calamitous loss of face.

Since another 40,000 men and women soldiers will be arriving there by mid-February while the Brits will have at least 30,000 men and 17 warships led by the HMS Ark Royal, flagship of the fleet, the biggest naval task force in the past 20 years. The Aussies are sending 2,000 with special skills to join the "Baghdad Express" of America’s "coalition of the willing" (as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dubbed it in his Munich speech last weekend). The juggernaut has begun gathering momentum by the day.

But wait! All of the sudden, the German-French "axis" has thrown a spanner into the works. Not only have the governments of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and President Jacques Chirac openly declared that the United Nations weapons inspectors should be given more time to hunt for any weapons or violations in Iraq, but that more inspectors must be sent in and guarded, if necessary by UN security forces.

What’s worse, Russian President Vladimir Putin, arriving from Moscow to meet with Chirac and Schroeder has joined the chorus – and the axis? – to sing out: "stop the war". Chirac, Schroeder and Putin are asserting that war on Saddam isn’t necessary – for now.

That is being viewed in an outraged Washington as a bid to put a crimp in the Bush-Blair timetable.

The Swedish chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, is himself singing a slightly different tune from that he himmed last week. He’s now saying that Saddam Insane is becoming a bit more cooperative, and that, if he can, he’d like several months more to do his detective work. Sanamagan, poor Dubya! Done in by his former "allies". Former? C’mon, George – they never were your friends.

* * *

The truth is that a superpower, even more than that, a "hyperpower" has no friends: Only outright enemies, or envious rivals, and "clients".

The rivals, hopelessly less powerful and less moneyed (and understandably more kuripot in their spending habits, including their minuscule budgets for defense), resent Big Brother.

The "client" states, like say, the Philippines, may express their support for Uncle Sam out of sentiment and "shared values", but there’s the bread and butter factor, too. There’s no shame in this, outside of the shameful fact of penury. The "New Europeans" mostly from central and eastern Europe (America’s former foes of the Warsaw Pact, the erstwhile footsoldiers of the defunct Soviet bloc), who’re fulsomely backing up the Bush offensive against Saddam, are hoping for aid, trade, and deeper friendship with Washington DC.

That’s life.

Once America had to save France from the (Nazi) Germans. Today, the Germans and French are ganging up on America – with, hello, ex-KGB Spook, now Russian President Putin, whose capital of Moscow was once described by America’s former President Ronald Reagan as the nerve-center of "The Evil Empire", joining them in this undertaking.

My old professor at SAIS, Ambassador George Kennan – the venerable former "Mr. X" – used to repeat, almost ad nauseam that "power abhors a vacuum". Power also enjoys playing the game of musical chairs. Yesterday’s allies may be today’s pests. Yesterday’s foes may become the best friends of the moment. Everybody’s out for something – namely, self-interest.

* * *

President Macapagal-Arroyo is getting brickbats from the usual quarters for having declared she was "convinced" by the evidence presented by US Secretary Colin Powell, and that Saddam Hussein was obviously up to no good. She said the right thing. If she looks more closely at those who’re angrily staging a rally of two (for photo opportunity value) with the familiar streamers and placards, reviling her for what she’s said and threatening to depose her before her stint is over on June 30, 2004 – big deal – she’ll see that same familiar faces of the "Ibagsak ang imperyalismo" crowd.

In the meantime, it makes sense to support Bush and the United States. The US is our biggest trading partner. It buys the most from us, along with Japan, and sells the most to us.

I’ve read and heard many piously declaring that to sell our souls for material gain or barter our "principles" (they holler) for cash, would be disgraceful. Better a starving nation which retains its honor, they assert, than a nation which "sells out". They’re absolutely and morally right, of course. But it’s quite clear those who speak so eloquently in this manner are not starving.

Do you know why a phalanx of our congressmen so blithely "cleared" Commission on Elections Commissioner Luzviminda Tancangco (outfoxing the idealistic solons who were determined to "impeach" her by the sneak attack of calling for a vote on a Monday, when it should have been Tuesday)? The 69 pro-Tancangco representatives didn’t give a hang for public opinion or public reaction.

One of my friends in the House told me why:

"Those congressmen who voted ‘pro’ come from districts where, they’re convinced, the majority of their electorate don’t read the newspapers. What matters to them is the politica del estomago. Just give the voters money at election time, in the meantime give them basketball courts, finance their fiestas, ‘bury’ their dead, whether real or fictitious, grant them ‘help’ when they ask, be the ninong or ninang at their baptisms and weddings, finance their fiestas and salu-salos. What the newspapers say? Forget it!"

I wish I could say this isn’t true. But you know, yourself, it is. That’s why we get such bum leaders.

Abe Lincoln put it well when he remarked that a people only get the government that they deserve.

Obviously, we don’t deserve better.

* * *

Our envoy to Baghdad, Ambassador Grace Escalante, had denied she and her staffers have been told by either the President or Foreign Affairs SecretaryBlas Ople to close up their Embassy and leave Iraq.

That belies the announcement attributed to National Security Adviser Roilo Golez. Now which is which? The trouble with Roy, his detractors who are numerous keep on saying, is that he used to be boxing champ in his midshipman days of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. "Must have taken too many punches in the head," they quip.

Indeed, it doesn’t make sense to close down our Embassy there. Our diplomats are there to be our eyes and ears, even if stormed at with shot and shell, as well as look after the welfare of all Filipinos there, numbering – we hear – about 160.

By the same token, the weird story last week (including the report which appeared in this newspaper) that police and military security had been withdrawn from the Iraqi Embassy here because Iraqi diplomats were meddling in local affairs was patently false ab initio. It is every government’s duty to safeguard diplomats and their diplomatic staff, their chanceries and residences, from any danger even if they suffer from B.O. or halitosis.

Sooner rather than later, there will be an "invasion" of Iraq by US-British coalition forces (they’ll never get United Nations okay, since the French will use their veto in the Security Council, as well as probably some other Council members). When that time comes, our people out there may indeed have to evacuate – by land. Since there is a "no fly" prohibition over Baghdad and most of Iraq, they’ll have to head for the Jordanian border, which requires a ten to 11 hours’ overland trip through difficult desert terrain. Their destination: Amman.

This is what happened when Saddam himself invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and the refugee situation intensified when Operation Desert Storm was launched against Saddam on February 23, 1991. Hundreds of thousands of foreigners in Kuwait and Iraq fled to the Jordanian frontier.

For two or three weeks, large numbers of Pinoys, Indians and Bangladeshi (both mostly Bengalis) and Sri Lankans had to camp out in the desert, at the frontier, while international refugee and rescue organizations, tried to charter or beg for aircraft to fly them to their homelands.

In emergencies like this, aren’t we happy that we have a national flag carrier like Philippine Airlines to "request" to fly any of our 1.4 million Filipinos to safety if they happen to be in harm’s way? What other airline could we tap for such a "rescue" effort? Lufthansa, Alitalia, Swissair, United Airlines, Gulf Air? No way. No money, no honey. And cash for charter we apparently haven’t got.

As for the lone C-130 our Philippine Air Force have bravely volunteered, how many trips could it make?

If you’ll recall, former NAIA General Manager Ed Carrascoso was tasked to speed a medical mission of volunteer doctors and nurses to the Gulf, and "evacuate" endangered Filipinos, by the Cory Administration. Carrascoso was chosen because he had been doing business in the Middle East for years, and had many friends in high places – including emirs and sultans – in the Gulf area.

* * *

The Americans are tapping their own air carriers, too – and for economic, as well as strategic reasons. It’s clear that the US Defense Department, according to its latest announced "plan", is leasing passenger and cargo aircraft from 22 American air carriers to ferry American troops and equipment to the Gulf partly to subsidize those financially shaky airlines.

According to a dispatch from Washington, the DOD’s authority covers the leasing of 47 passenger aircraft and 31 wide-body cargo aircraft.

The Pentagon had invoked a similar authority to lease private aircraft before the 1991 Gulf War. Currently, US military officials stated, "about 93 percent of American troops, and 41 percent of long-range military air cargo are moved by chartered commercial aircraft."

The US did the same thing during the Vietnam War. This journalist arrived in Saigon in the afternoon of the day the terrible "Tet" Offensive began on January 31, 1968. Along with TV Channel 5 chief camera editor, the late Tony Tecson (in those days, our sister TV station), I had hopped on a MAC-V jet bound for Tan Son Nhut airport from Clark Air Force Base in Angeles, Pampanga.

The flight took two hours and 40 minutes, and when we touched down at Tan Son Nhut, the Saigon airbase, it was under heavy Viet Cong mortar attack, and our plane went zig-zagging down the pitted and pock-marked runway. Luckily, we weren’t hit by any of the "incoming", but our stewardesses were terrified – and, I confess, all of us intrepid newsmen and soldiers on board, were scared shitless. I distinctly recall that the four attractive air hostesses were attired in colorful bloomers, since the jet was a passenger airplane "chartered" from Delta Airways. (MAC-V means, of course, "Military Assistant Command – Vietnam.")

When you arrive at Tan Son Nhut airport today – the present regime has amended the spelling, for reasons unknown to me to "Tan Son Nhat." – you can still spot the fortified bunkers by which American fighter jets, usually Phantoms and F-111s, were "protected" from incoming mortar or shellfire while they revved up to take to the sky to counter-attack the enemy. The hulks of abandoned helicopters, which used to be overgrown by weeds at the airport, have been cleared away. Tan Son Nhat looks sleek, peaceful, and the terminal is being modernized.

The welcome mat is even out for Americans to come, hold sentimental reunions with their former adversaries (who greet them with smiles and hospitality), and, of course, bring investment and tourist dollars. The Communist Vietnamese, incidentally, used to laugh (scoff?) at their former Russian and East Bloc allies who came to advise, staff the taken-over bases, or as tourists and rubbernecks, as "Americans without dollars".

In Baghdad, who knows? Someday, instead of damning them as Ugly or "Quiet Americans", Iraqis might be calling out, "Victory, Joe" and "Chocolate, Joe?" Or, "come wiz me to ze Casbah."

After all, Sinbad the sailor might not have enlisted in the US Navy, but he know how to adjust to any situation."