What’s done is done: After the local euphoria fades, we must prepare to cope with further crisis

Well, it’s done. There’s no rever-sing or revising the decision to yield to the terrorists’ ultimatum, abandoning our participation in Iraq, and incurring the disappointment and ire of our former "coalition" allies.

The government and our nation must now prepare for the next challenge, from terrorist groups, who have discovered anew our soft center and our vulnerability to pain, and from the disenchantment of our erstwhile allies which surely will be translated into economic and financial terms, including the prospect of employment of our other OFWs and other Filipino contractors.

I hope we get back hostage Angelo de la Cruz, unharmed, and in time for President GMA to present him to the joint session of Congress, and to the country on nationwide television. Might as well make the most of La Presidenta having rescued one Filipino overseas worker from the terrorist headman’s axe.

Who can blame La Gloria for doing what Presidents do? Grab a "heroic" photo opportunity.

Leaders from Europe to America and Asia must, in the end, indulge in a kind of showbiz, to impress and even electrify their populations. Britain’s Winston Churchill was a master of this method, which he coupled with inspiring words, even in his nation’s darkest hour, which is a time when a leader’s mettle is truly tested. France’s General and later President Charles de Gaulle exhibited this flair. China’s Chairman and Great Helmsman Mao Zedong had a similar gift for the dramatic. On October 1, 1949, when Mao and his victorious People’s Liberation Army marshals and generals stood on Tien An Men Square to proclaim the Chinese People’s Republic, establishing dominion over a country so vast it could easily contain all of Europe from the English Channel to the Caspian Sea, his punch line was simple and direct. Mao declared: "The Chinese people today stand erect!"

What will GMA say when she presents Angelo to the audience assembled for her annual SONA (State of the Nation Address)?

Her speech writers must by now be brainstorming some memorable declaration.

* * *

Shorn of media hype and the buckets of praise being heaped on La Presidenta for having preferred saving the life of the Filipino worker to brown-nosing the bottom of Uncle Superpower, we must begin thinking of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Bashing GMA any more for the decision to junk our pledge to the "coalition", abandoning the new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi (the terrorists have now placed a big price on his head!), and pulling our puny 51-member Philippine semi-military contingent out, is counter-productive.

It’s over. We must swallow both our outlandish euphoria or our shame, and strive to recover what we can of our lost credibility in the outside world (and with regard to our own homegrown terrorists here in this archipelago). To stave off future outrages to be inflicted by those who’ve concluded we’re a nation of wimps, we must try to recover despairingly lost ground, and struggle to become strong. GMA has for more than a year been attempting to picture ourselves as a "Strong Republic", but we were blown down by the first gust of wind. It’s time to pick ourselves up – and demonstrate we can be strong.

How? Let’s see what the next move of our enemies will be. With 7.4 million Overseas Filipino Workers – 1.4 million of them in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, other Middle East countries (including Israel) – we are at risk everywhere. Each time a ship sinks, Filipino seamen go down with it (as recent sea disasters have demonstrated). Everywhere there’s a war, Filipino OFWs die or are grievously wounded. Our OFWs are slain when a suicide car-bomb blows up a bus in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, or a building in Baghdad, or when terrorists raid a compound in Al-Kobar, Saudi Arabia.

When this writer flew into Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport on a military plane in February 1968 with a TV crew led by Channel 5’s then camera chief, the late Tony Tecson (an exceptionally brave guy), to cover the bloody "Tet" offensive, much of our first day was spent along with Filipino executives and co-workers in Vietnam trying to find the corpses of ten Filipino employees of Eastern Construction (a company owned by the group of former Congressman and ex-guerrilla leader Frisco San Juan).

The engineers and the mechanics of the firm had been enroute to the airport to take a flight home to Manila in the early hours of that first day of Viet Cong attack – which almost, by the way, overwhelmed South Vietnam. The V.C. had ambushed our OFW’s convoy, wiping the Filipino homeward-bound contingent out. They had also – if you’ll recall – pounded their way into the US Embassy in Saigon which they held for hours against ARVIN and US counter-attack.

In any event, we heartbreakingly never recovered those bodies. We learned, many hours later, that they may have been bulldozed into a common grave (to prevent an epidemic from the piles of torn and shredded corpses lying around, already putrefying and attracting swarms of flies).

This is the story of our OFWs. Hostaged, even in Africa (like Angola and the Congo), slain in the Middle East, killed in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, in areas of conflict.

Every life is sacred, but sadly, we can’t save them all. Our OFWs in the world’s troubled areas know they are always at risk, but they must go where they can find employment since their families face hardship, deprivation and even starvation here at home.

What bothers me is that, now it has once again been proven that our government caves in to threat, murderous blackmail and extortion, more of our OFWs will be at greater risk. The Abu Sayyaf, the Jemaah Islamiyah, and other terrorists in Mindanao already know this well. Heaven knows how much profit and publicity (around the world, with their international mix of hostages) the Abu Sayyaf already extracted in the past few years – while merrily beheading people right in our own backyard.

The Economist of London’s latest issue (July 17th-23rd), which slammed both George W. Bush and Britain’s Tony Blair on its cover as Sincere Deceivers, ran a story on page 29 which called what’s happening "A Dangerous Gamble". The article not only referred to our "already shaky reputation as an ally in the American-led war on terrorism", but added that "if Mr. (Angelo) de la Cruz’s abductors believe . . . that they have succeeded in forcing the Philippines’ hand, the citizens of all other countries that have contributed to the multinational force in Iraq are even more at risk".

The Thais, probably spooked by our Philippine contingent decamping, have quickly followed suit and are beginning to withdraw their 480-member force from Iraq. Is the "coalition" then unravelling, the process accelerated by our stampede for the exit? Oh, well. At least Mongolia is sending 130 soldiers to Iraq.

* * *

In May 1966, when it was proposed by the Americans to then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, I vehemently opposed sending Filipino troops to South Vietnam.

I had been covering the Vietnam War from its inception, first during the debacle of the French, to the coming of the first American advisers in 1958, and later in 1965 the full-fledged arrival in Da Nang of US Marines, then full battalions and divisions of the American military. (I had even been expelled in 1960 by the late President Ngo Dinh Diem, whose government called me "a Communist agent provocateur" and managed to return only in 1964 following the poor Diem’s overthrow and assassination. I grieve for Diem, whatever his and his sister-in-law, the Dragon Lady Madam Ngo dinh Nhu’s mistakes. He had been a true patriot, but too trusting of his own family – and his felonious and treacherous coterie.)

When it was proposed in 1966 that Marcos send a "small" Filipino military contingent to join the "allied" forces of Australia, Thailand and South Korea in fighting the Vietnam War, along with the then Saigon government and the Americans, I had feared it was an attempt to suck our country into what I thought was an endless conflict.

At least to his credit, Marcos gave me the opportunity to argue my objections before the Armed Forces’ top command, headed by then AFP Chief of Staff, my friend General Ernesto Mata (just returned from a four-day visit to Vietnam).

Macoy convened the entire AFP General Staff in his study room in Malacañang to enable me to explain with statistics, charts, and my, well, "experiences" in the battlefield, why the Americans were slyly enticing us into dispatching a small "force", placing them in a strategically dangerous area, then "inviting" the Viet Cong and the DRVN (North Vietnamese regulars) to attack and destroy our force.

Our Congress and our people, I had warned, "outraged" at this horrible wipe-out of our fighting men, would then be expected to erupt in fury and declare "all-out war" on the Vietnamese Communists, dispatching complete battalions to join the fray.

Marcos and the generals listened politely to my rantings (he humored me, I guess) but went ahead anyway.

Congress authorized the sending of a Philippine Civic Action Group (Philcag).

The brave officer designated to lead the group, Brig. Gen. Gaudencio E. Tobias, went off to Saigon on June 23 to survey the situation. He returned after 10 days, overwhelmed by the arguments of his South Vietnamese counterparts and of US General William C. Westmoreland.

They told Tobias the Philcag would, indeed, be stationed in Tay Ninh (near the Cambodian border), but promised that one brigade from the American 25th Division stationed at Hau Nghia would be shifted to Tay Ninh to "protect" our engineering contingent. They failed to inform him that the nerve-center, the headquarters of the Communist COSVN which directed the entire Viet Cong effort in the south, was only a few miles away in Nuy Baden (Black Lady Mountain).

So our Philcag wen, right into harm’s way. I’m proud of them. They did their job bravely and well. The Viet Cong (and Hanoi, from where the war was directed by General Vo Nguyen Giap – whom I interviewed there last year) cannily did not try to wipe out our Philcag encampment, but confined themselves only to sporadic attacks and a few minor ambushes.

During the Tet offensive, this writer spent a few days with Philcag in Tay Ninh, and was rewarded by then Major Fidel V. Ramos with a pair of combat boots, which I still use today, and a flak vest which I found useful in the succeeding weeks in which the combat raged. The stellar names in our military establishment, General Abad, Magno, and, in truth, all my friends in the Philcag I and II (later to be known as FVR’s Philcag Mafia) all served honorably – in the teeth of danger – in Vietnam.

What I’m saying is that once our country was committed, we stayed the course. Our Philcag remained there until, by agreement, it was time to leave.

This is the opposite, alas, with what has happened in Iraq. We quit the field before our pledged commitment was completed – on August 20, next month.

But what the heck. It’s time to gird ourselves for the next challenge. And hope, this time, we won’t flop.