| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Biggest Losers in Iraq� THE CHANCES of Bush getting reelected, in fact, have increased as a result of this war. His popularity has surged upwards despite the war protests. I guess he knows that the U.S. is hated whether it engages in a war or not. And it will be hated no matter what it does. And Americans don't want to be pelted by arrogant dictators. Being hated is the fate of the rich and powerful. It is some kind of status symbol to be against the U.S. But if if the U.S. plays its cards well this time in Iraq, its image could change. Gras Reyes. [email protected] March 25, 2003 ������������������������������������ MR. ABAYA, I concur with you. Jose G. Caedo [email protected] March 25, 2003 Mayor's Office On Disability 401 Van Ness Ave. Ste. 300 San Francisco, CA 94102 ���������������������������� YOUR OBJECTIVE and incisive analyses and commentaries on world and domestic affairs never cease to amaze me. I only wished they were published here too (in the U.S.) so that more people (at least Filipinos in America) would have the opportunity to read materials devoid of propaganda, lies and biased partisan philosophies. Even among my circle of "friends" who invariably came from "good schools" like U.P., Ateneo and La Salle (my alma mater) where presumably they have acquired ideal degrees of humanistic education, many are incurably naive, partisan, and prone to believe everything that's purveyed by the market-oriented commercial television, biased newspapers, and propaganda-laced websites.. A few exceptions of course are tv stations like Channel 13 and National Public Radio. We also have an overwhelming number of Filipino "masang tanga" here in the U.S. despite the upward mobility they have acquired. They are doctors, nurses, corporate executives, wall-street types, bankers, accountants and under-employed lawyers. I guess it's true that you can get the boy out of the country but you can't get the country out of the boy. They are now loudly beating the drums for these horrific "shock and awe" spectacular fireworks in the skies of Baghdad. They watch and enjoy the nightly episodes with pornographic delight. In last Sundays homily, our Franciscan presider, recounted his experience at Newark Airport just two days earlier. While he was waiting for his flight, he watched a bunch of innocent-looking five year olds, glued on television, watching the hellish visions and exhilirating sounds of the bombing of Baghdad. They were cheering: "Get 'em! "Get 'em!", "get 'em!" Frank Jimenez [email protected] New Jersey March 26, 2003 ����������������������������� Once again a brief note to express our undivided support for your thoughts! It is really quite incredible how things have unfolded, and believe it or not, and my wife Nerissa is my witness..., I did predict trouble when I analyzed Bush junior after his appointment by technicality, and said so to Nerissa then. This President is truly an arrogant, self-righteous man, and I do believe that he actually is convinced to have had some sort of "calling" as the chosen one to set things right. The man is far too pious while lacking intellect and thoughtfulness in his delivery. In redneck terms I would describe him as a footsie cowboy (a cowboy who doesn't know how to ride his horse), in professional terms Bush can only be described as simply incompetent. Interesting to know in terms of the $ sign that the first oil well contract in Iraq has now been promptly awarded to the institution Cheney headed before running with Bush junior. What a farce and what terrible consequences for us and our children. We haven't even begun to understand its gravities... I do hope though that the level headedness of Americans will prevail at the end of the road, even though many, just like us, are still traumatized by 9/11, thus ensuring that Bush junior will be out of office come Nov. 2004! I wish you well and allow me to say once again, we always look forward to consuming the integrity of your thoughts. Johannes Jahns (email address on file) Ayala Alabang, Muntinlupa March 27, 2003 ��������������������������� JESUS WAS never on the side of the powerful, in fact his message was a weapon of destruction to their arrogance and lust for power. And how they reacted with virulence against a poor helpless rabbi from Nazareth! The Falwells, the Robertsons and their minions who believe that capitalism is the economic embodiment of Christianity have always been on the side of the rich and the mighty. Ergo they are not on the side of Christ. Levy Lanaria [email protected] April 2, 2003 .OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Biggest Losers In Iraq By Antonio C. Abaya March 19, 2003 As of this writing (afternoon of March 19), President George W. (for Warmonger) Bush has given Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his two sons 48 hours to leave their own country or �face military action at a time of our choosing.� Not since the heyday of Attila the Hun has such barbarous arrogance marked the relationship of one nation with another. Not surprisingly, the Iraqis, a proud people whose ancestors were among the first to invent agriculture, astronomy and the written language, rejected such an insufferable ultimatum, moving one Iraqi official to wonder out loud how such �an ignorant man became the leader of a clever people like the Americans.� (The answer, of course, is that the American masa, especially those in the Bible Belt of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, are just as ignorant as their leader. These are the yokels and rednecks of Middle America, who do not accept the tenets of Darwinian evolution, who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible (including the fiction that the state of Israel is a creation of God), who accept, without any evidence at all, that Saddam Hussein had something to do with their national trauma of 9/11, and who have been convinced that they are threatened by the 150-km-range missiles of a third rate power more than 12,000 kms away. Never underestimate the power of ignorance.) And so, unless Saddam Hussein or George W. Bush is assassinated by one of their own, the world will soon lurch into the first global war of the 21st century, and tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands (the Pentagon has reportedly placed an order for 75,000 body bags) are going to die in the next few weeks as a testament to that abysmal ignorance made lethal by monumental arrogance and ferocious firepower. ***** It is truly amazing how in the space of only four or five months, a small coterie of power freaks in Washington DC � George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle � have managed to squander all the sympathy and goodwill that the rest of the world had showered on America for the unspeakable outrage that they had suffered on 9/11. Not to mention the institutions and alliances that had taken their forebears decades to stitch together but which they have now wrecked, possibly beyond repair: the trans-Atlantic partnership between the Old World and the New, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, and now the United Nations. Paraphrasing Churchill, never in the annals of the bovine world have so few macho bulls (and one black Angus cow) broken so many dishes in such a short time in the global village china shop. Truly a deserving entry for the Guinness Book of Records, and my collective nominee for the Nobel Prize for Peace in Pieces. ***** It can be argued that the biggest losers in the looming war in Iraq will be the Americans, even though there is no doubt that they will emerge militarily victorious. There is no balance at all in the military and economic strengths of the US vis-�-vis those of Iraq. The actual battle will probably be over in two weeks, after which a stalemate could ensue as the Americans hesitate going into Baghdad and risk the heavy casualties that street fighting inevitably entails. But the Americans will be the losers because they have arrogantly reverted to the law of the jungle, and they are now more universally despised than they have ever been. And the next time they are victimized by terrorism on a grand scale, there will not be much sympathy for them as they will be seen as having brought it on themselves, of having harvested what they have sown. Except for the ever obsequious loyalty of their Filipino houseboys and one tiny housegirl, the Americans and their Israeli prot�g�s (in the real sense of that word) are now isolated from much of the rest of humanity. As for the Filipinos, the British weekly magazine The Economist (March 8) commented that in the event of war �the biggest loser (in Southeast Asia) will be the Philippines. Electronics make up almost 70% of its exports, and it sends 30% of them to America. It consumes more imported oil per dollar of GDP than any other country in Southeast Asia. It suffers from terrorism, insurgencies and crime. Its ballooning public debt is already weighing on the economy. And it is the only country in the region with a direct stake in any war against Iraq. More than one million of its citizens work in the Gulf countries, and help keep the economy afloat by sending much of their wages home. If a war sends them fleeing, the Philippines will have to cope with a refugee crisis and a current account crisis. No wonder the peso and the stock market are under pressure.� But not to worry. If and when the Americans rebuild the Iraq that they devastate, there will jobs galore for ever loyal houseboys and housegirls. ***** March 24 update: Four days into the Second Gulf War, there is no sign of Iraq�s vaunted weapons of mass destruction, which, in case anyone has forgotten, was the main reason cited by George W. Bush for launching his splendid little war. Is Saddam biding his time, waiting for the Americans and the British to get sucked into Baghdad, where he will then detonate his bio/chem./nuclear weapons as a grand finale to several days or weeks of bloody street-fighting, which could cause thousands of dead and wounded? Who knows? The last time the Americans got sucked into street fighting was in 1994, in Mogadishu in Somalia which was only a large village, not a real urban area. They hastily beat a retreat after suffering only 18 dead at the hands of armed followers of tribal warlords, not even a regular army. The US� last taste of real urban fighting was in the Battle of Hue during the Viet Cong�s Tet Offensive, in February-March 1968, exactly 35 years ago this month. Hue was the ancient imperial capital of Vietnam and had thick-walled fortifications, rather like our Intramuros, which the Viet Cong captured in a lightning strike during Tet, the Chinese New Year. Despite their superiority in numbers and firepower (which included tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships and jet fighter-bombers), the US Marines took more than 30 days to drive out the VC- armed only with AK-47s, machineguns, RPGs and bazookas - from Hue, suffering hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded in the process. The tenacity of Victor Charlie, the US military�s slang for the Viet Cong, moved the Marines to respectfully refer to their adversaries as �Mr. Charlie.� The Americans should have, but apparently have not, learned never to underestimate the power of nationalism. (On a personal level, I named our first child, born in April that year, Victoria Carla, in honor of the Viet Cong.) As climax of a war unpopular from the start, the Tet Offensive of 1968 caught the US military and government by surprise, both by its scale (more than 70 towns and cities all over Vietnam were attacked simultaneously) and its ferocity (even the US Embassy building in Saigon became the scene of room-to-room fighting for several hours). It fanned anti-war feelings at home to incendiary levels and forced President Lyndon B. Johnson, realizing how unpopular he had become, to abandon plans to run for a second term in November that year. Is President George W. Bush prepared to risk a similar fate? He could wind up the biggest loser of them all. ***** The bulk of this article appears in the March 29, 2003 issue of the Philippines Free Press magazine. |