What we need from the Yanks are two cruise missiles, my doctor says

Hundreds of rebels belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF, remember?) ambushed Bravo Company of the Army’s 67th Infantry Brigade just before dawn last Wednesday in Barangay Inoma, a remote village in Lanao del Sur.

After a five-hour gun-battle, the insurgents were routed, leaving a soldier dead, and eight other army troopers wounded. The army "estimated" 20 Moro rebels had been slain, but didn’t have the corpses to confirm by actual body count.

The military rather lamely explained that the MILF insurgents had carried off both their wounded and dead when they withdrew. (The attacking force had been headed by Commander Saydamin of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, the military said.)

My point is: Why are we still insisting on conducting more "peace talks" with the MILF when their guerrillas keep on attacking ceaselessly, and are now even threatening the Army’s 401st brigade along the Narciso Ramos highway linking Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao and Cotabato?

It seems silly and counter-productive to keep on endlessly pursuing the cycle of "shoot-talk-shoot" ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

We must insist as a sovereign republic on one principle, and one solution alone: As long as there are bands of armed men, whatever their religion or ideology, roving our provinces there can be no "peace" of any kind in Mindanao – and if there is no peace, there cannot be any progress, whether economic or political.

Why all this dithering about? Disarm everybody! Only the government’s law enforcers – the police, and the legitimate armed forces – can be authorized to bear arms. It’s the law. It’s what the Constitution says, too. So why all the confusion?

If the MILF has 12,000 armed rebels in its ranks, as the insurgent group’s Chieftain, Hashim Salamat (trained in Cairo, Egypt, mind you) and his commanders claim, everyone of them must surrender arms or be disarmed.

Only if "peace talks" lead to this can such parleying be useful. Who does Salamat think he is: Saddam Insane?

* * *

Betcha our television networks, who always play up rebel propaganda (attention ANC-ABS CBN, GMA 7 et cetera) will immediately put the MILF’s Chief Propagandist Eid Kabalu – excuse me, Attorney Eid Kabalu – on the air to scoff that the MILF are being blamed, when it is the Army which attacked them, not vice-versa – or that the heartless and bloody Davao wharf terrorist bombing (which killed 16 including a well-beloved nun) and those Mosque "attacks" in Davao had been set off to ignite a Christian-Muslim vendetta. Yah. Tell me another fairy tale.

Salamabit. Our radio-TV networks equally glorify Ka Roger, the Grand Propagandist of the Communist New People’s Army (NPA), all the time. When the NPAs ambushed and killed seven PNP officers and men in Bulacan, one well-known GMA-7 commentator not merely put Ka Roger on the air so the rebel blabbermouth could deliver a long harangue, but even let him "congratulate" his NPA kapatids for having slain so many policemen and for promoting the …uh, people’s struggle! In other countries, when radio-television stations or networks broadcast the incendiary declarations of revolutionaries and rebels who are openly seeking to overthrow the government – indeed, inciting the people to revolt, di ba?– isn’t this dissemination of inflammatory messages considered seditious, and even treason? What about in this country of ours? Is this a state where anything goes? No wonder we’re in such a mess.

I think, as a scarred, old journalist, I understand something of the nature of press freedom and freedom of speech. When I was arrested by the military of the late dictator, President Ferdinand Marcos, in the first hour of martial law in September 1972 and slapped into maximum security prison, accused of "contributing to sedition" (that’s what the arrest warrant had stated), I was at the other end, in truth the sharp tip of the bayonet. But what’s been happening is the very opposite of freedom, I fear: It’s the abuse of freedom.

Perhaps the National Telecommunications Commission ought to shake itself from its slumber, and examine the matter more closely. No government, even dating back to Athenian "democracy" in ancient times, is obligated by its ideals of freedom to hand a sword to the enemy which can be pushed at its own throat, or commit "suicide" by gifting revolutionaries with a loaded gun, and bleating: "Go ahead, please feel free to fire."

It’s a weird state of affairs we have in our troubled nation, sad to say. Outlaws rampage all over the place, killing, raping, kidnapping, looting. Sanamagan, even "beheading" their victims. But when they’re caught, they cry for the protection of the law. And, by golly, they get this "protection" – it’s called due process.

Why, they even manage to "escape".

* * *

The battles for Baghdad and Basra have begun. The US Marines, the 7th Cavalry, the US 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division, have, as everybody knows, seized the Saddam International Airport (and renamed it "Baghdad International"), and are flirting in and out of the Iraqi capital itself – without, at this stage, really going-for-broke into the city center itself.

The first 22,000 men, Abrams MIA2 tanks, Bradleys, and other armor of the 4th "Digital" Infantry Division have finally landed in Kuwait (after being shooed away by the Turks, and spending three seasick weeks of the ocean wave). In a week’s time, we’re told, the 4th Infantry will be ready to join the fray – if they’re still needed in a week’s time. Nobody really knows.

If you want to get confused, just keep switching from BBC to CNN, to Al Jazeera, and watching, like a tennis match, the conflicting claims of US CentCom (Qatar) and the Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf. One gets the impression that both sides are talking of a different war.

As for Britain’s Royal Marines and the Queen’s own Dragoons (they ride tanks, not white horses nowadays), they’ve begun their drive into the port city of Basra. We hope that it’s true that the Iraqi commander there, Sad-dam’s murderous cousin "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid, the sweet fellow who gassed the Kurds – men, women and children – falling by the thousands), and personally put a bullet through the head of Saddam’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, had been slain in an air-strike on his house. If you want to know how nasty Ali-Baby is, when Iraq invaded and conquered Kuwait in 1990, he was named Military Governor. Among the methods of persuasion he employed to cow the Kuwaiti population was the establishment of "Rape Rooms" where Iraqi guardsmen and soldiers raped Kuwaiti women, and those of other nationalities – including a number of Filipina workers. This was a way of establishing their "authority".

A foreign diplomat, formerly based in Amman, Jordan, told me of a well-known Iraqi exile there who used to give speeches and radio-TV interviews denouncing Saddam. One day, Saddam’s agents visited him in Amman, and showed him a video of his sister, back in Iraq, being raped by Iraqi soldiers. They said they would disseminate and publicize her "shame" all over the networks if he didn’t shut up.

When the Royal Marines and the Desert Rats of the 7th Armored Brigade got into Basra, I suggest they check on whether Ali got totaled – or got away. Aside from Uday and Qusay, Saddam’s sadistic sons, he’s Public Enemy Number Two.

On the other hand, perhaps the Americans and Brits won’t win if trigger-happy, bomb-slap-happy US pilots and missile-launchmen don’t stop killing their own in escalating incidents of "friendly fire." (Unfriendly, really, if you ask me.)

It’s bad enough that a Royal Air Force "Tornado" jet the other week was blasted to bits by an American "Patriot Missile". Or a British armored column was hit by an A-10 "Warthog" tank-buster aircraft, resulting in the death of an officer of the Queen’s Household Cavalry.

In the latest tragic "mistake" only yesterday, the well-known British TV talk-show host and journalist, John Simpson, (of "Simpson’s World") was wounded and almost killed between Mosul and Kirkuk in the Kurdish North when a US fighter-jet (was it an F-15, or a F-16 Fighting Falcon?) erroneously dropped a bomb on a column carrying US Special Forces men and their Kurdish allies. Three American Special Forces men reportedly died in that incident, and possibly five Kurdish fighters, not to mention a still unidentified Kurdish leader who was (according to BBC just before this writing) seriously wounded.

In the "fog of war", such things happen – as we learned when covering the Vietnam War (and almost got hit ourselves). Many Americans and South Vietnamese allies died from "friendly fire", including napalm attacks and even from Agent Orange – talking about weapons of mass destruction.

Then there were the Canadian soldiers killed by "friendly fire" in Afghanistan last year when a US jet-cowboy, mistaking the flashes from their night-time maneuvers as rockets directed at him, bombed and rocketed them by mistake. (No wonder the Canadians are opposed to the Iraq War.)

What puzzles me is that, despite the high-tech advances in GPS and other electronic wizardry, such horrifying errors still persist, with their resultant toll on morale and with heartbreaking frequency. (Nothing is more poignant and sorrowful to the families back home than to have their loved ones slain by their own side.)

But back to the grim reality of combat. War is war. Many more will still die, not just from the contending armies, but civilians. And if those jihadis rushing in from Jordan and Syria to join the battle against the Coalition "invaders" get there in time, they’re welcome, I guess, to join the caravan to Paradise – and those waiting virgins who are the promised heavenly reward, by the Beard of the Prophet.

You can be sure that quite a number of those formidable Abrams MIA1 and MIA2 tanks are being blasted by Iraqi-held anti-tank rockets and RPGs, including the advanced weaponry procured from the Russians. The Abrams, although the most powerful of the Main Battle Tanks in existence, have their vulnerabilities – including their rear grills, which the new weaponry can penetrate if properly aimed.

One reason, perhaps, the Americans are only pushing "reconnaissance" missions into Baghdad, and not yet committing their armor into an all-out fight in city center is what even Nazi Germany’s famed Panzer genius, the inventor of the armored Blitzkrieg, General Heinz Guderian, discovered when he smashed his Panzerwagen into Poland on September 1, 1939, the opening salvo of Adolf Hitler’s big push to dominate Europe.

When his tanks got to Warsaw on September 9, he found out the tank’s limits: "Its inability to subdue cities."

That day, the Polish defenders led by Maj. General Czum destroyed 57 German tanks in three hours of street-fighting with anti-tank artillery and "petrol cocktails". This tactic still works today, you better believe it.

The Yanks will wait for their Marines and their Infantrymen to do the street-to-street fighting – if it comes to that. They’ll win, of course. What’s to be seen is at what cost.

* * *

I had lunch with a ranking American diplomat a few days ago. What we discussed was confidential – no, it wasn’t a plot. We talked about ways and means, at his request, the US could really help the Philippines.

That same afternoon I met my doctor in St. Luke’s. I felt free at least to tell him that this diplomat had asked me, "How can we help the Filipino people?"

Without hesitation my doctor replied: "Tell him we need two Tomahawk cruise missiles!"

"Why two cruise missiles?" I reacted in surprise.

The doc said: "One for the Batasan (Congress), and the other for the Senate."

No further comment.