When you’re in a war, never rule out anything

President GMA flew down to Davao to the scene of the crime, namely the bomb-struck Davao airport. She vowed to pursue the perpetrators. She commiserated with the victims.

Then, she went on to say what was unnecessary. She declared, once again, that she would never allow American troops to play a combat role in the Philippines. What was she waiting for? The applause of the families of the victims? I'll bet Davaoeños, at this moment, wish the Yanks were there!

When you’re at war, Madam Commander-in-Chief, never rule out anything.

Would American soldiers engaged in a firefight (what if they were here as observers or instructors and were fired upon?) be violating the Constitution? Possibly. But when bullets are flying, nobody on the spot can shelter behind a copy of the Constitution, or wave a bulletproof Supreme Court decision to ward off bullets, bombs, missiles or projectiles.

Was an American missionary among the 21 killed in the Davao blast, which the terrorist concerned had deliberately planted among civilians in the airport waiting shed? He was an unarmed Christian "soldier" in a gunless battle to save souls. In truth, all wars are cruel, mindless, and "immoral", but when terrorists strike they’re deterred by no such considerations. Neither should we be deterred when we’re forced to fight them.

Last Rizal Day, December 30, the President bravely declared that she was not going to run for re-election so she would be free of political considerations and not be weak when she made decisions. The message she meant to deliver was that she would, thenceforth, be strong in order to build a "strong Republic".

She’s been anything but strong ever since – weaving, hesitating, appointing TRAPOS, not daring to offend, pulled and yanked about by friends and manipulated by enemies, inserting square pegs into round holes (who’s Braganza? never met him), shilly-shallying, going urong-sulong depending on the "cast" at a conference, and now snubbing the Americans when, God knows – plus everybody in embattled Mindanao (even some Muslims) – we need their help.

Sure, DND Secretary Angie Reyes muffed it in his usual swaggering but stumble-bum manner (huffing and puffing about going forward, even if in full retreat), but what the heck. The Americans in the Pentagon bragged too much, to boot. However, let’s not delude ourselves. We need their hardware, their weapons, their night-vision stuff, their radios, their helicopter gunships, their back-up – but, as usual, we’re the kind who look a gift horse in the mouth and reject it because it’s got bad breath... i.e., political bad breath. What’s GMA got to be afraid of? She’s not running for re-election anyhow. Why not then assert: "Damn the torpedos, I’m doing what I think is best for my country and my countrymen!"

Impeach her? She should dare her critics to impeach her. The way things are in this country, her term will be long over before any impeachment measure even gets dusted off the shelf. In the meantime, she will have been able to show that, in times of crisis and danger, she’s made of the right stuff. And the people will cheer her courage – and, yup, chutzpah.

* * *

Yesterday, another bomb was exploded in a South Cotabato department store. Who dunnit? It doesn’t matter whether the Abu Sayyaf, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or some "Lost Command" did it. Or even the New People’s Army. In Mindanao, they’re all in the same "front".

Yet, what we present to the foes of our nation is a front which is splintered, perennially finger-pointing, and thoroughly disunited.

Finally, now that the Islamic terrorists have struck so bloodily at his own hometown, what can Presidential "peacemaker", former Davao Congressman Jess Dureza, say now? I hope he resigns from the Surrender Gang.

The MILF rebels, it’s been shown time and again, want nothing less than an Islamic State of Mindanao, tailored to their design. If we’re willing to expel the Christians there, who outnumber them three to one, then let’s surrender to them and give them what they want. That’s the only kind of "peace talk" they desire. When our armed forces hit them, they cry "foul". When they hit us, they intone that it is Allah’s command and the dictates of jihad. The insurgents harass, torture and kill civilians, including priests, nuns, and schoolchildren, sometimes even behead a few soldiers (the Abu Sayyaf behead priests and hostages). When their own civilians and their families suffer in a military offensive, they cry injustice, treachery, cruelty and harassment. We’re losing even the war of words.

As for the "suspended" idea of American soldiers going to Sulu, there’s now foolish talk about transferring the projected (and aborted?) Balikatan somewhere else – like, somebody said, to Quezon province. Do you know who’re waiting for them in ambush in Quezon province – and who’ll rail (on television prime time) to high heavens about US imperialist invasion? The Communist New People’s Army. That’s their territory. Don’t you remember the famous media-idol, Ka Roger who constantly appears on ANC/ABS-CBN? He occasionally gets more billing than FPJ, pontificating from Quezon province, with his parish extending all the way to Bicol.

Madam President: Stay the course. Don’t change the script, only parts of the dialogue. Send those guys down to Sulu where they’ll do the most good – and do the worst to the Abus down there, and, why not? Get into a dust-up with the MILF, still-rebellious MNLF, and any other troublemakers. When asked whether those US grunts are there for "combat", GMA can bring out her usual dimple and exclaim: "Combat? They’re only there to play badminton."

Her usual critics and detractors will sneer that nobody will believe her. Who believes her now, anyway? This is her golden chance to stand fast, nail her flag to the mast, and go for broke – for God and country. And let the devil take the hindmost.

All that ek-ek about how wrong it is for us to let the Americans fight OUR war is ridiculous. Of course, we will fight our war – but if we can get Americans (Sus, even Martians, by golly) to help us fight our war, why should we be so selfish about it? You’d think it was a gold mine or a treasure trove we were so zealously protecting. Our pride? Many people are in the cemetery because they stepped on the gas – instead of on the brakes – when a big truck was bearing down on them at full speed, because they felt they had the right of way. Misplaced pride – or worse, jingoism – gets the same result.

Perhaps I’ve seen too many dead people in the streets, in the débris and carnage of combat, in the jungle and swamp, in my checkered career as a newspaperman. There is neither pride nor dignity in violent death. Even less in defeat. We must do all it takes not to be defeated in the life and death struggle that threatens our land, its integrity, and the survival of our Republic.

Too much defeatist and cowardly talk is what will sap us of our strength, rob us of our self-confidence, turn us into jelly, and destroy our nation. You can call it "free speech", all you want. But that’s what happens.

* * *

We must not forget that other war, the war on the druglords and their weasels on the street. The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has released a report stating that no less than 11 transnational and 215 local drug syndicates are operating here. The US State Department has already said that the Philippines has become the main transshipment point of illegal drugs to several countries in the Asia-Pacific region and, naturally, to the United States.

What’s this? The drug trade is now alleged to earn over $5 billion a year – or the equivalent of P270 billion. PDEA Director General Anselmo Avenido Jr. maintains that methamphetamines or shabu is smuggled into the country via four main routes, i.e. seaports, international airports, the mail, and parcel services, not to mention anywhere along our unprotected coastline. We’re an archipelago, boasting more than 7,100 islands, yet what have we done to bring our Philippine Navy and our Coast Guard up to scratch? The Navy, for instance, has fine officers and men, but our "flotilla" of naval craft is pathetic.

A lot of the shabu which isn’t manufactured locally comes from China. Avenido revealed, moreover, that between 1998 and 2002, a total of 298 foreigners ("aliens", we like to call them) were arrested for drug-pushing or drug-making under our Dangerous Drugs Act. Of this number, 206 were Chinese. Does this not tell us something?

What concluded the PDEA report was even more chilling. Avenido estimated that there are now 1.8 million regular "users" in the country, plus another 1.6 million "occasional" users. Our people are being destroyed by drugs. Why, those addicts far outnumber all the rebel groups put together. It’s cause for grave concern. But our leaders seem to be in a state of denial about it.

A month ago, I was at the Thai-Myanmar (Burmese) border. Thai police and military checkpoints had been set up there, because there was a new "flow" of drugs, both opium and methamphetamines from Myanmar, as well as the hilltribe areas along the frontier. Indeed, most of the opium and heroin (some calculate 80 percent) peddled on American streets comes from "The Golden Triangle" which is where this writer stood only weeks ago – the area in Thailand’s Chiang Rai which impinges on Burma and Northern Laos.

* * *

I was just reading a book, Blood Brothers: Crime, Business and Politics in Asia, by Bertil Lintner (Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2002). Lintner, a senior writer for the Far Eastern Economic Review had lived in Thailand since 1979. His theme was that all over Asia, gangsters, government officials and intelligence agents interact, while organized crime networks threaten the rest of the world. "Russian gangsters are active in New York, Miami and California; Chinese gangs run Chinatowns all over the US and Europe; Vietnamese mobsters have taken over the heroin trade to Australia, and the Japanese Yakuza not influence government and business at home, but chase the yen through Southeast Asia and Hawaii to Australia’s Gold Coast."

"Some argue," the blurb of his volume points out, "that corruption and illicit business ventures – gambling, prostitution, drug trafficking, gun running, oil smuggling – are entrenched parts of the Asian value system." (Is this why some big shots don’t want us to put an effective AMLA or anti-money laundering law, into place?)

On page 259, Lintner writes: "Burma’s annual opium production in the 1980s was in the order of 400-600 tonnes annually. In the late 1990s, however, production shot up to over 1,000 tonnes and by 1995 it had increased to 2,340 tonnes. Satellite imagery showed that the area under poppy cultivation increased from 92,300 hectares in 1987 to 142,700 in 1989 and 154,000 in 1995. The potential heroin output soared from 54 tonnes in 1987 to 166 tonnes in 1995, making drugs the impoverished and mismanaged country’s only growth industry. At the same time, a string of new heroin refineries were set up in Kokang and the Wa hills, conveniently located near the main growing areas in northern Burma and, equally important, close to the rapidly growing Chinese drug market and seemingly easier routes through Yunnan to the outside world.

"In the early 1990s, the same laboratories in northern Burma began to produce methamphetamines."

There’s one obvious reason for the expansion of poppy-growing, and the emergence of shabu "factories" (even among some hilltribes inside Thailand itself, I noticed on my last trip): The market is growing by leaps and bounds – and we, in the Philippines, are among the big customers!

We can worry, naturally, about Saddam Insane. But here’s a "weapon of mass destruction" that’s an even more proximate peril to our people.

We have to wake up to that menace. It’s not only "Ecstasy" that kills, or the raving at "Rave" parties.