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With great power comes great responsibility.
Unfortunately, great intelligence and diligence don’t always come
with great power. The government of the United States of America is
a very good example. The USA has succeeded in making the world a
more dangerous place for everybody, Americans and non-Americans
alike. Then came the US Senate’s inquiry into the killings of
local leaders of CPP-NPA front organizations. The brilliance of the
inquiry is the same brilliance characterizing the way the US has
been winning the war in Iraq.
“The US government is not
concerned with the CPP-NPA because it does not consider the latter
as a threat to them in the US’ global war on terrorism,” one
military officer told me. “We can’t do anything but to sigh on
how and why the US could still treat the CPP-NPA, including its
front organizations as a benign entity,” another officer shared in
an e-mail.
The US military attaché requires
from any member of the AFP who will undergo schooling on American
soil a clearance from the Commission on Human Rights. This is the
CHR whose chairman Purificacion Quisumbing has rolled out the red
carpet for the CPP-NPA front organization, Karapatan.
Complaints filed by this
organization is piling up against members of the AFP.
US Ambassador Kristie Kenney has
expressed concern with the killings but failed to put the killings
in context. Sen. Barbara Boxer believes that future US assistance to
the Philippine military should be tied up to ending the killings of
members of CPP-NPA front organizations. At the same time, the US
government wants the AFP to fight and neutralize Muslim terrorists.
The Muslim terrorists, unlike the CPP-NPA, constitute a threat to US
interests, so here there is no end to American assistance and
support. But isn’t it the same AFP that is fighting both Muslim
terrorists and communist rebels? The USA, through its political
leaders and key government officials, is demoralizing and weakening
the AFP by playing right into the hands of the CPP-NPA, an
organization that ironically has been tagged by the US government as
terrorist.
David W. Barno, in his article,
“Challenges in Fighting Global Insurgency,” has some points
about how insurgents wage war. First of all, their war is a long (or
protracted) war. Barno asserts that in Fourth Generation Warfare
“the enemy’s target becomes the political establishment and the
policymakers of his adversary, not the adversary’s armed forces or
tactical formations.” The insurgents’ “biggest operational
weapon is the global information grid, particularly the
international media.” Where the tactical level is the most
important level in traditional warfare, the insurgent puts emphasis
on the political and strategic levels. The war isn’t won in the
battlefield. Iraq only demonstrates too well that relying on
superior firepower and technology hasn’t given the US forces any
advantage. Retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, who headed the
Philippine contingent in Iraq, said that the Americans, out of fear
or deliberate strategy, failed to reach out to and interact with
civilians. This resulted in the enemy’s propaganda often being
uncontested. Failure to interact with Iraqis lead to further
paranoia among the Americans, making them see every Iraqi as a
potential enemy according to the retired general (who has begun a
new chapter of his colorful life by running as first nominee of the
Bantay party-list).
The way that the AFP is waging
its war against the CPP-NPA may not always be the most clever, but
it isn’t the killing fields that Karapatan has succeeded in making
Philip Alston and US government officials believe. The whole
scenario is their own making, says one AFP officer, and “many of
us in the military believe that the CPP leadership and protracted
strategy are succeeding. Before anybody would know it, the fight is
over. With an AFP that really needs to be reinspired, refurbished
and reinvigorated, how can we suppress the NPA’s armed struggle?
The Muslim terrorists are not
after Philippine state power. They want independence for certain
parts of Southern Philippines, unlike the CPP-NPA that wants
everything. With the unintended but nevertheless convincing support
of the US government, through its Congress and embassy, the CPP-NPA
has won another round in its protracted war against the Philippine
government.
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