Not mice, but men

Two days ago, I wrongly attributed a quotation to William Shakespeare which belongs, in truth, to the Scottish national poet Robert Burns.

This quotation "of mice and men" came from Burns’s most famous poem, To a Mouse – a verse couched in the Scottish vernacular, and which begins with the line, "Wee, Sleeket, cowrin, tim’rous beastie . . ."

I guess that describes us today, following our timorous, cowardly withdrawal from Iraq.

And to think some sectors, among them priests and bishops, Leftists and Communists (the NPAs even!) are applauding our Government for "saving" poor OFW Angelo de la Cruz. What I fear is the inevitable result: more OFWs will suffer for this mistake. It isn’t even sure yet, whether we’ve actually saved Angelo from harm at the hands of the now-rejoicing terrorists. They’ve bludgeoned our Government to its knees, and they know they can do this again anytime they want.

What’s more devastating is the loss of not just our pride and honor, but our credibility. Who’ll believe in our pledges anymore, whether in mutual defense, dependability, loyalty, or business transactions?

Our country joined the "coalition of the willing" in the Iraq war. It may have turned out to be a difficult, even hateful war, but we joined a coalition and should have stayed the course – up to the very end of our commitment.

Many Americans, astonished that no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found, are against the war. I’ve just read the umpteenth anti-Bush book, savagely written by James Moore, an Emmy Award-winning TV news correspondent with more than a quarter century of print and broadcast experience. (He’s also the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Bush’s Brain, which was critical of Bush and the men who are his braintrust). Moore traveled on every Presidential campaign since 1976, reporting for CNN, NBC, and CBS. Now he’s published an attack entitled Bush’s War for Re-election, subtitled Iraq, the White House, and The People (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New Jersey, USA and Canada, 2004).

What’s painful about the book is that in its pages are interviews with parents who’ll never forgive Bush for having sent their children into a war in Iraq – from which those soldiers will never return. For they died in what they now decry was an unnecessary and meaningless war. The volume concludes on page 329 with an angry, anguished letter, addressed to President Bush from Tonopah, Nevada, written by Wade Lieseke.

In its final paragraphs, Lieseke asks: "Why are you so concerned, if that is the right word, about Iraq having power and schools, and medical care, to the tune of 166 billion dollars, when most people can’t afford medicine, lose power, and have substandard schools in America?" It is the plaint of the common citizen who can’t understand why so much blood and treasure, effort and money needed at home, should be expended on a distant and alien land whose people they neither know nor understand.

The most poignant are the last lines: "Many more will die, and maybe someday you will tell the truth about why they died. We want to know. Chelle Pokorney wants to know, and I know Taylor Pokorney will want to know someday. Our son, the best person I have ever known, is gone, a hero who gave his life for his country, and many more followed him to Arlington. You got your war, Mr. President, against all advice, and the cost in American lives mounts every day with nothing changing over there, except more grieving families here. Can you live with that, Mr. President? I hope not."

The fact is that Presidents, Prime Ministers, and other national leaders and rulers, must live with the results and consequences of making hard decisions every day until their own dying breath. This responsibility, this pain is branded on the forehead of every leader the minute she or he assumes office, or the throne. It is the cross a leader has to accept, and the scourging that goes with the messianic mission. The crown is a crown of thorns.

Bush made a hard choice, as did Britain’s Tony Blair (he, too, pays the price of electoral setback and the hatred of the families who lost sons and daughters in the conflict). But that is the burden to be borne. Mistakes are often enough committed, but decisions must be made. When GMA, with her eyes wide open, committed our nation to join the fight, she as leader must have weighed and understood the costs. Now, it has been distressingly demonstrated that we are not willing to bear the burden, nor pay the price.

The surrender to the Islamic terrorists (why call those merciless head-choppers "martyrs" for Islam and Iraq when they murder defenseless and innocent victims?) will have repercussions undreamed of by those who are now wildly rejoicing and applauding our "withdrawal" and the salvation, if it occurs, of poor De la Cruz.

To begin with, outside of the other nations shrugging us away as spineless and not to be trusted, Americans will act in fury. Even those who hate the war themselves will detest and despise their erstwhile "allies" who desert the battlefield, abandoning their boys who’re stuck in the desert, in the midst of a war. Imagine yourself a soldier engaged in a fierce firefight, and you see your comrades-in-arms cut and run.

Methinks, even our armed forces are ashamed in their hearts, although they won’t speak out, owing to discipline and . . . well, respect for the Commander-in-Chief.

Remember what happened between Manila and Washington DC when our Senate kicked the Americans out of their bases in September 1991? Cordial relations vanished in a wink, aid was cut out, even the enlistment of Filipinos in the US Navy was terminated. Years of resentment and hostility ensued. It wasn’t a Cold War but a Cold Peace. Not just the scores of thousands who were Base workers, and their families (in the hundreds of thousands) but the entire Philippine economy suffered in repercussion.

Remember, at that time, America was not at war – and the blow was mostly to US pride. Today, America is in a war, and we’ve just – even with our puny, laughably tiny contingent of policemen and "humanitarian aid" soldiers – deserted their troops on the battlefield.

Will the US impose sanctions? You bet. And our economy is bankrupt, our fiscal budget kaput, our treasury empty, and our debts horrendous.

"We don’t need the Americans!" "Are we puppets of the Yanks?" "The hell with the Great Satan!" "Ibagsak ang imperyalismo!" "Damn those Yanquis!" will be the outcry of "nationalists", patriots and many in our media. So be it. We’ll know the score in the months to come.

The only other country to have left Iraq was Spain. But the newly-elected Socialist Prime Minister Jose Rodriguez Zapatero had no choice. Getting Spanish troops out of Iraq had been his party’s campaign platform when it was battling to overthrow the ruling Partido Popular of President/Prime Minister Jose Aznar. However, by way of trying to redress the embarrassment in the "coalition", the Spaniards committed to send more of their troops to join the fight against the al-Qaeda and the Taleban insurgents in Afghanistan.

We sent a very small contingent to Iraq. And now, with our tails between our legs, we’re pulling them out.

* * *

The pertinent lines in the poem of Robert Burns (1759-1796) were: "The best laid schemes o’ mice and men Gang aft agley." (The last words in Gaelic mean "often go awry") Yep, our own best schemes go astray often enough, and now we’re showing that we’re mice, not men.

A month ago, visiting Scotland, I went to the field of "Bannockburn", also hymned by Burns in another of his great poems. There, on June 24, 1314, a Scottish army – led by the Scots hero, Robert the Bruce – defeated the vastly larger forces of England’s King Edward II. In his poem, Burns reviled cowards who "turn & file" (flee) from the battlefield.

So striking was Burns’s expression, "of mice and men", that the American writer, John Steinbeck, by the way, took it to be the title of his famous novel published in 1937, made into a Hollywood movie, in the same way his other bestseller, Cannery Row, became a celebrated motion picture, too.

* * *

In the gloom over the wrongheaded decision regarding our pull-out from Iraq, I forgot that last Wednesday was the French national day, "Bastille Day". I belatedly say, "Vive la France!"

Three weeks ago, I was in Paris. As is my custom, if I find the time, I made a pilgrimage to Les Invalides, a collection of buildings notable to tourists, for the reason that, in its Eglise du Dome, Napoleon Bonaparte reposes in his final rest – the Emperor of France and of half Europe, the Child of Destiny, the Eagle of Austerlitz, reduced to a final domain of a few square meters within a tomb red porphyry. But it is not to Napoleon’s tomb that I went. Nearby is another, less dramatic catafalque named Marshal Ferdinand Foch. (He is honored, of course, by Parisians with an avenue bearing his name – a street grown notorious some years ago as the scene of many wife-swapping escapades).

I knelt at Foch’s grave, a self-conscious act which must be startling to passing Frenchmen, to mumble a prayer for this hero who probably never heard of the Philippines. I say the prayer in gratitude. When I was very young, my father (who himself was to die a soldier’s death) told me the story of how Ferdinand Foch had saved Paris, and France, from being overrun by the Germans on September 9, 1914. In the disastrous Battle of Marne, the apparently irresistible German Army was advancing on all fronts. The French troops, battered by superior numbers, were on the verge of panic and retreat. Foch, positioning himself in the front line, rallied his men about him and sent back to his chief, Marshal Joffre, the following memorable message: "My center is giving way, my right flank is falling back, the situation is excellent. I shall attack." And attack he did, and won!

"Never forget what Foch did," my father used to say. "When you think everything is against you, when you feel like giving up, the situation is perfect – that is the time to attack!" Then he added something in French (a language in which he was fluent): "L’audace, toujours l’audace!" Only by the audacity of a Foch, was his lesson to a little boy, could victory be snatched from the jaws of defeat.