Before we can make our AFP a lean, mean machine, politics must go

It’s disgusting how our politicians are shamelessly trying to exploit our boxing idol, Manny Pacquiao, for their own selfish purposes. From top to bottom, they’ve been seeking to gate-crash the Pacquiao bandwagon, beginning in Vegas during Manny P.’s moment of heady triumph.

Last Friday’s motorcade featured one of the most blatant attempts at one-upmanship, with Manila Mayor Lito Atienza, already overpowering Pacquiao’s get-up with his garish, red Hawaiian shirt, went waving all over the place by Pacquiao’s side as he were the champ – and Pacquiao the chump.

Gee whiz. Pacquiao isn’t even from Manila, but from GenSan, and has a home in Davao City. Of course, in this shining hour he belongs to our entire, admiring nation – a Comeback Kid who smackerooed the rival who had outpointed him by a hair at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas ten months earlier – earning a decisive victory with his flashing fists. Atienza, in his frenzied effort to upstage Pacquiao, was only punching air. Oh well. Tiger Woods and Brad Pitt got handsomely paid for advertising Tag Hauer watches. With the clock ticking an end to Atienza’s mayorship, I guess we can’t blame him for brazenly muscling in on Manny’s spotlight to promote his bid for . . . for what? For his next reincarnation: Manila Congressman? Mark Jimenez, who’s now in his monastic period (but he’ll still sue Nani Perez), ought to run against Lito. The two deserve each other.

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With the coup-coup jitters receding – hopefully – let me clarify what I said in previous columns about giving our Armed Forces a P100 billion one-time-only budget so our military can upgrade itself, in training, recruitment, equipment, weaponry, aircraft and naval craft. Having forged a new military out of such hard steel, we can then turn them loose on the Communist New People’s Army and other rebel movements which have been nibbling away at our cash-strapped military, whittling our armed forces down with cruel persistence.

Before GMA and her government do this unorthodox thing – don’t worry, the money can be raised with a little imagination and determination – they must first do another courageous thing: trim the Armed Forces Table of Organization to a manageable level.

We have too many generals and top brass. If the trend of promoting everybody to general keeps up, we’ll have a tribe composed of mostly big fat Chiefs and not enough Indians to do the warrior stuff: fighting and scalping the foe. In short, what we need is not a bloated armed forces, with too much in the gut and too little guts, but a "lean and mean" machine which is well-trained, well-paid, well-respected. An instrument of warfare which is tough as nails.

We can learn much from the Israelis for instance. With a population of only 6.1 million, Israel maintains a total armed forces of 175,000 men and women on active service, with reserves of 430,000. This means 134,000 in the Army, a Navy of 9,000 and 32,000 aviators and airmen in a superb Air Force, ready to scramble in a few short minutes. Paramilitary, in addition, number 6,000. Conscription and the draft are, of course, the key to the staying power of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Men and women must serve in the IDF, and after that remain "on call" for years thereafter.

There are, of course, the Refuseniks – draftees who refuse to go into the army for moral or political reasons – but these are few.

In sharp contrast, our military has far too many generals – susmariosep, La Presidenta has announced she will appoint 54 more! Generals get to be obese, sluggish, and soft, preferring to enjoy their perks. What we must get and maintain are "warriors."

The United States Marines (now in somewhat bad odor with our media and ourselves owing to the Subic Rape case) have at least one sterling and Spartan dictum: "Every man a rifleman." This means that every US Marine, from older Leatherneck to Jarhead, from General to Cook, must be on the rifle range every week, day after day, to gain and keep hair-trigger proficiency in rifles, and other assault weapons. The idea is for every Marine to be ready for battle, every minute, with no slackers holed up in the rear. Each man honed to the disciplinary snap of snatching up a rifle, and rushing from the cypher clerk’s desk, or the soap stove, to take up combat positions and bang away if ever there is a surprise attack. There is little defense against suicide-bombers, like the one who drove a truck right into a Marine Camp in Lebanon in 1983, then detonated an immense bomb which collapsed the building, killed 241 mostly sleeping US Marines, and created mayhem in general.

The same tactic killed 30 Israeli soldiers in Tyre when the Israeli forces invaded Lebanon. These were Hezbollah’s first forays into suicide-bomb tactics.

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Speaking of the past few days, there can be no "peace" in the Middle East. Going to the polls, Palestinian voters "democratically" gave Hamas – the radical organization dedicated to the eradication of Israel, overwhelming control of the parliament of the Palestinian Authority. In a paroxysm of triumph, Hamas supporters raised the Islamic green banner on the roof of the Palestinian Parliament house in Ramallah – which is just a few minutes out of Jerusalem.

I’ve been to Ramallah several times to interview Palestinian representatives in the past, and the anti-Israeli sentiment used to run there bitter and strong, long before it became the headquarters of the late Yassir Arafat. Now, the Palestinians, by voting Hamas into power, have virtually declared "war" on Israel.

Hamas won 76 seats in the 132-seat legislature against only 54 for the more moderate Fatah the party of the late Arafat and that of the current President, Mahmoud Abbas. Does this mean, then, that Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya, will now take over control of the Palestinian Authority.

I believe it is fatuous, as many are now timidly suggesting, to believe that Haniya and Hamas will now take a more moderate line and backpedal on its vow to make Israel a Palestinian land and eliminate Israel itself as a nation and state from the face of the earth. The Hard Line is what brought Hamas to power – by popular vote, mind you. Why should they abandon it?

Israel, with Ariel Sharon in the hospital (and certainly never capable of taking up leadership again) and former Mayor Ehud Olmert now Prime Minister – a scrapper in his own light – has no hesitations or doubts about its reaction to the Hamas victory. Israel will withdraw completely within its own borders, and mobilize to fight.

It is US President George W. Bush, beset by his own terrible problems at home, and the leaders of the European Union who are in a quandary. Both groups subsidize the Palestinian Authority. The US gives US $400 million annually to the Palestinians. The European Union either matches this amount, or donates more.

Will Washington DC now withdraw its financial support – loathe to subsidize "terrorism" and the group which sends suicide-bombers and Qassam rockets against Israel in the prosecution of the Intifada?

Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya or the Islamic Resistance Movement, which in Arabic also spells out as "zeal". The Hamas fighters are, therefore, the Zealots of the anti-Jewish war.

Hamas, the Palestinian chapter of the Moslem Brotherhood, which also gained significant ground in Egypt during last October’s elections there despite the repression of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, by winning 88 seats in the 545-member Parliament in Cairo, declares in its charter: "There is no solution to the Palestinian Problem except by Jihad (Holy War)." The charter adds: "The initiatives, options, and international conferences are a waste of time and a kind of child’s play."

Instead of the PLO charter’s assertion that Palestine is an ‘indivisible’ part of the Arab homeland, Hamas affirms that "the land of Palestine is an Islamic waaf (trust) upon all Muslim generations till the day of Resurrection." Instead of merely denouncing Zionism and imperialism, Hamas "castigates the Unbelievers." How can there be peace or compromise with the Israeli Unbelievers then?

The Hamas charter quotes lengthily from the Qu’uran (Holy Koran) and other Islamic texts, especially the hadith or saying of the Prophet Muhammad: "The last hour will not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and until the Jews hide themselves behind a stone or a tree, and a stone or a tree says: ‘Muslim or Servant of Allah there is a Jew behind me – come and kill him!"

Can any statement of policy be more specific? A moderate Hamas, I fear, is an oxymoron. This is why Israel is probably girding for war.