SAF bellyacher stains legacy of ‘Fallen-44’

READERS REACT to last Monday’s item on Transport Sec. Joseph Abaya privatizing the profitable O&M of LRT-2, which would lead to layoffs of present train drivers, ticket sellers, etc.:

Elmer Maat: “No wonder some train engineers drive like they aim to destroy the train. I’ve been riding the LRT regularly since the ‘80s, so am familiar with its normal speed. Last Dec. 2 around 4 p.m. the driver was over-speeding, and abruptly breaking at stations, so passengers were slammed against the coach walls and windows. I could feel the tracks crunching underneath. I complained to the management via the hotline at the Buendia station. I also hope they finally connect the LRT and MRT lines at North Avenue, QC. Thousands of passengers are inconvenienced daily by the long walk between the two end stations.”

Artemio Tipon: “Your headline asks: ‘LRT-2 is profitable, so why bid out operations?’ Answer is simple: kickbacks.”

Thank you to the many others who wrote but could not be accommodated here.

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For a civilian to opinionate on the Mamasapano massacre is free speech. For a soldier to do the same is insolence. That Special Action Force officer whom another newspaper quoted as discontented with the President is marching out of step. He treads on grounds even Noynoy Aquino’s bitterest political foes would deem dangerous.

In sum, the officer rants that P-Noy show some balls, in light of Moro separatists’ slaughter of 44 SAF commandos. “We’re looking for a strong statement from the Commander-in-Chief that sides with us, but instead he gives a statement then takes it back,” the officer allegedly blabbered.

He was referring to P-Noy’s flip-flopping about the Moro Islamic Liberation Front which, despite a truce with the government, ambushed the troopers who had just slain a wanted terrorist in the rebels’ barrio. P-Noy’s first public reaction to the butchery had been to push all the more for Congress’ expansion of the Muslim autonomous region, as the MILF wants. Two nights later at the wake of the 44, he praised the wounded survivors for clashing with “halang ang bituka (rogues).” The following week he was renewing the peace talks with the MILF – the same rogues that massacred the commandos and were coddling another terrorist that had slipped the dragnet.

The officer was described as a member of the SAF team that killed Malaysian terror bomber Marwan and helped retrieve the bodies of his fallen comrades-in-arms. He claimed to be speaking for the SAF rank and file, but requested confidentiality of his name or rank for security.

Hopefully there’s just that one bad apple to not spoil the whole SAF bunch. For, by bellyaching, he tarnishes the gallantry of the 44 killed and 16 wounded. Among the dead were the sergeant who kept fighting even as his head spurted blood, the medic who tended the wounded instead of fleeing during lulls in gunfire, and the mortally wounded lieutenant who ordered his last able man to escape and tell the world their story. The deeds of the others eventually will be known. They are heroes.

It’s but natural for the bereaved widows and parents to seek answers, like why there were no reinforcements. Apt too are newsmen’s probes into angles even if disconcerting for P-Noy. Proper as well are political leaders’ open criticisms of P-Noy’s backflips and debates on the peace talks. And reasonable is the public’s cry for justice against the rebels who finished off the wounded SAF men with shots to the head, then looted the weapons, uniforms, and personal mobiles. But for that SAF officer to yak against his C-in-C is wrong. Into his head must be pounded the words of France’s greatest soldier Charles de Gaulle:

“Men who adopt the profession of arms submit of their own free will to a law of perpetual constraint. Of their own accord they reject the right to live where they choose, to say what they think, to dress as they like. From the moment they become soldiers it needs but an order to settle them in this place, to move them to that, to separate them from their families, and dislocate their normal lives. On the word of command they must rise, march, run, endure bad weather, go without sleep or food, be isolated in some distant post, work till they drop. They have ceased to be the masters of their fate. If they drop in their tracks, if their ashes are scattered to the four winds, that is all part and parcel of their job.”

In short, the state gives the soldier a rifle, a tank, a warship, a fighter jet, a missile. In turn the soldier gives up his civil rights. For, woe to the state that lets armed men rule the civilians.

That the SAF is part of the civilian National Police, not the military, is no excuse. The commando unit has military hardware and training, and employs military tactics and terms (like the oft-repeated “T-O-T,” time-on-target). The military acknowledges the SAF’s superior capabilities from regular cops, and competes with it in recruiting ideal storm troopers from the Cordilleras. The SAF was pivotal in the civilian-backed military uprising against Dictator Marcos in Feb. 1986. (P-Noy’s foes daydream though if they think the SAF can pull off a coup d’état.)

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The government keeps twitting the MILF central committee for inability to control field units. Example: the 105th Base Command that encircled the SAF commandos despite the truce, and kept firing in disregard of orders of MILF ceasefire monitors.

The MILF must be guffawing, “Look who’s talking.” For, it’s clear that the government can’t control its men either. Proof: the suspended PNP chief meddled in a top-secret raid, to the point of “advising” the SAF head to keep it even from the next in command and the Secretary of Interior. Worse, the SAF head complied.

The PNP chief even arranged P-Noy’s briefing by the SAF chief on Jan. 9, one month into his six-month suspension. It’s just like the MILF 105th pretending to be battling its breakaway but blood-tied Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.

The government sneers at MILF vice chairman Gadzali Jaafar for habitual doublespeak. Like, he says the MILF renounces terrorism, yet glosses over the fact that two international terrorists were residing with heavily armed bodyguards in booby-trapped huts at the edge of the 105th’s base.

Government officials too are guilty of dissembling. Like, the suspended PNP chief stated under oath that he never was involved in the SAF operation. Yet in the Jan. 9 briefing he told the SAF head he would take care of informing the Armed Forces chief. On Jan. 19 he also texted the SAF head for details of the forthcoming raid. And on Jan. 25 he did tell the military about the battle raging in Mamasapano.

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