‘Scorpion’ in the desert: Will America win or lose a war of attrition in Iraq?

The President called me up yesterday to ask who was the very high-ranking official in the Justice Department who had gotten his nephew "off the hook" when the rascal was arrested dealing heavily in the mind-destroying designer drug, "ecstasy".

She’s dead serious about her campaign to smash the drug menace in the country, come what may. I told her the official concerned was no longer in the government. Had he been a Cabinet member? she asked. I didn’t answer that.

The trouble with our country is that, almost all of the time, personal relationships are considered more vital than the public good. It’s human nature to care for "family first". But, here, it’s carried to the extreme. This is why the sons, nephews, and, yes, daughters of the powerful, and the wealthy as well, believe they can get away with anything. And they usually do.

The poor are spoiled, as well, that’s the paradox. They can get away with everything, too: Because they’re kapus-palad. Look at the squatters whose shanties mushroom everywhere. They can’t be budged or moved. This is because they have the most reliable "vote". All politicians have to do is pay them off and jeep or truck them to the polling precincts.

We’ll have to put a stop to those two types of "spoiling" our people rotten if we want to progress, or attain a just and safe society.

In our brief conversation, I didn’t have the opportunity – our cellphone connection conked out – to ask the President about her strange arrangement with Senator Robert Z. Barbers. How can Barbers be the "anti-drugs czar", yet remain in the Senate doing his thing as chairman of the "Overnight Committee on Dangerous Drugs"? A senator is a legislator, not a cop. An "oversight committee" oversees but doesn’t have power to execute. It’s just like gifting Barbers with a gun, but it only contains blanks.

What we need is a fulltime anti-Drugs Fighter, leading a tough team of "Untouchables" as in those old Elliot Ness television series and the movie. Even GMA’s remark that Barbers "can do as he pleases" sounds strange. Nobody can do as he pleases. If Barbers isn’t empowered to arrest, or to shoot, then it’s all malarkey and stale propaganda, not down-to-earth gang-busting.

The President will have to come up with something more specific. Even that hyped-up meeting between Barbers and his old chums, former DILG Secretary, former Manila Mayor and NBI Director Fred "Dirty Harry" Lim and the redoubtable Captain Rey Jaylo (a true-blue two-fisted, straight-shooting cop), and Lucio Margallo looked more like a tea party than an honest-to-goodness possé.

For heaven’s sake, GMA: Pin those Marshall’s and Sheriff’s badges on them first. Then we can talk Cold Turkey.

* * *

The way I see it, Bishop Teodoro Bacano Jr. was replaced by Bishop Antonio Tobias only in the day-to-day running of the diocese of Novaliches. In short, Bacani remains the Bishop of Novaliches, but Tobias has been appointed to take over as the "apostolic administrator" of the diocese. Nor has Bacani been stripped of his priestly functions, that of saying Mass, administering the Sacraments or performing other priestly functions and Episcopal activities.

Former President Cory Aquino is right. Let’s tone down the yak-yak about Bacani (the press has virtually "convicted" poor Bacani in a feeding frenzy that more closely resembles a shark attack than sober reporting). After due investigation, the Vatican will decide his fate. When? It took many painful decades before the appearances of Our Immaculate Mother to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes were recognized as true apparitions and not manifestations of the devil in disguise. In the meantime, Rome will not fail, nor our own society collapse, nor the Catholic faith fade away, if we fail to rush to judgement.

Coming to the Most Rev. Antonio R. Robias, D.D., he has a distinguished record as a Churchman. Born June 13, 1941, in Manila, he was ordained a priest on December 21, 1965.

He was appointed Titular Bishop of Tipasa and Auxiliary Bishop of Zamboanga on November 3, 1982. He was finally ordained Bishop on January 25, 1983, and designated Bishop of Pagadian on September 14, 1984. He was named Bishop of San Fernando, La Union on May 28, 1993, and installed there on July 15, 1993.

We must remember, as His Eminence the Papal Nuncio, Antonio Franco, clearly declared in an unprecedented press conference, "the Holy See is still examining the case" of sexual harassment allegations against Bacani, filed by his former secretary, Ms. France Elaine C. Ventura.

It’s easy to accuse in the society of ours where so many are eager to believe the worst of others. Preachers and clerics are among the most vulnerable, of course, because they sneak of virtue and scold their "sinful" parishioners from their pulpits so often that when there’s a stain on the immaculately white sulplice, it becomes the object of heated discussion and contumely.

Alas, that’s what happened to the unfortunate Bishop Bacani. Susmariosep, when one examines the affair more closely, though an observer can only ask: What did he do?

* * *

The Americans are engaged in a tougher war than the high-tech kind of war they waged to "conquer" Iraq and topple Saddam Insane from his perch of power. They’re still asking whether Saddam is still alive. This is an important question.

The more important thing to consider, however, is whether the American forces now in Iraq will have the staying power to combat the "war of attrition" now being waged by the Fedayeen guerrillas who surround them, mounting violent anti-American demonstrations, and cutting US servicemen down from ambush or by sniper fire. If you’ll recall, this is what this writer and some others with some war experience predicted at the beginning of the Anglo-American assault on Saddam’s strongholds. We warned that the conventional forces of Saddam could not stand up to US technological might and the pounding of aircraft, but that the Saddam Fedayeen would begin waging the type of hit-and-run guerrilla war that our Filipino insurrectos used against the Americans in our country between 1898 and 1902.

This has come to pass, to utilize the biblical phrase. About 55 American soldiers have been killed since the day US President George W. Bush declared the "hostilities" over last May from the deck of an aircraft carrier. This is more than a third of the fatalities suffered by the US troops during the official first stage of the conflict.

This means that one American is slain per day, if the current casualty toll is maintained by the continuing attacks staged by Fedayeen or "foreign" Arabs who’ve been infiltrated into Iraq. This, naturally, afflicts the morale of the young servicemen who had believed the war was over, and had hoped to go home. The miscalculation shouldn’t have been made, but there you go. It always happens – in every army.

The Americans had calculated they only needed to keep 30,000 men in Iraq, and could send the rest home. Now, they’ve been compelled to maintain about 130,000 or more troops there festering in the increasingly boiling heat (temperatures, predictably, soaring to between 45 to 50 degrees centigrade) and in the irksome desert wastes.

The US military last week launched a large scale military sweep named "Desert Scorpion" to search out and capture or kill guerrillas, and show the resentful Iraqis they mean business. This continuing campaign won’t win "hearts and minds", but what the hell – the Muslim Arabs hate America, anyway.

Remember that interesting poll taken among 15,000 people in 20 countries in May by the Pew Research Center? The Muslim world’s negative attitudes towards the US soared even higher since the war in Iraq began on March 20 with the first wave of air attacks over Baghdad.

In Jordan, hatred against the US went up from 79 percent in 2002 to 99 percent in May 2003. Palestinian hatred is 98 percent – it’s euphemistically called "unfavorable opinion" in the survey results – which might indicate the Bush "roadmap" for peace between Palestinians and Israel was doomed from the start.

In Indonesia, unfavorable opinion stood at 83 percent. The biggest negative shift was in former ally, Turkey, where unfavorable attitudes shot up from 55 percent in the summer of 2002 to 83 percent today. In Pakistan, 81 percent; and in Lebanon, 71 percent (that’s because there are still many Christians there).

The Arabs are particularly bewailing the "Arab humiliation" arising from the easy victory of the US and Britain in Iraq.

Moreover, aside from the pro-Saddam Sunni Muslims, the once-oppressed Muslim Shiites, whipped up into a frenzy of rejection by their Ayatollahs, are also angrily demanding the Americans leave. What a nightmare for the Americans, many of whom thought they were doing "good" by liberating Iraqis from Saddam.

Naturally, those who’re loudly advocating Iraq for the Iraqis, also have a moist eye on power for themselves – and a slice of the multi-billions in petrodollars expected from rich oil reserves capable, when resuscitated further developed, of producing at least 3.5 million barrels of oil per day.

The Americans realize, of course, that if they depart, leaving those oil fields to a hostile Muslim group, they’ll have another Iran on their hands, run by Islamic fanatics bent on destroying the Great Satan which is what the late Ayatollah Khomeini branded the United States.

Or an anti-US regime even more deadly than Saddam’s. Imagine all that oil wealth being used to fund "terrorist" causes!

For all the vituperation currently being heaped on the Americans, and their own present discomfort, sad to say, it would be, well "suicidal" for the Americans to leave.

They let the dangerous Djinn of the desert out of the bottle when they uncorked native Iraqi ferocity by dethroning Saddam whose cruel regime had kept those furies in check. How to get the Djinn back into the bottle again is their dilemma. "Democracy" cannot be the answer, although they too glibly asserted that was their aim with regard to the Iraqi people. Now, they have discovered that "democracy" is not easily transplanted, nor can the promise of it act as a placebo to calm the sandstorm of discontent their presence has provoked.

But they cannot walk away from this problem.

It is devilishly expensive for them to remain in Iraq, in terms of blood, sacrifice, and treasure. It would be even more expensive for them, alas, to depart.