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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| McCarthyists By Antonio C. Abaya Written June 28, 2006 For Standard Today, June 29 issue A reader who gave his/her email address as [email protected], but not his or her name, reacted to my article Civil War? (June 20), taking me to task for my anti-Communist views. �I can agree with you in some ways. But in general, this column reads very much like from the unholy former US Communist Killer Senator who has seen Communists wherever he has been looking.� In other words, Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The email address indicates it comes from Germany (de for Deutschland). In addition, his/her peculiar use of the English language indicates the reader is German or Germanic. Not that it matters. His/her email will appear in full in www.tapatt.org, with my point-by-point reply. It is standard practice among liberals (and Communists) to label those who criticize Communists and Communism as McCarthyists. It saves them the trouble of thinking and examining the validity of their logic. The crux of the article in question was how our neighbors defeated their communist insurgents. As I pointed out, the Indonesians simply exterminated them like so many cockroaches. The Malaysians and the Singaporeans used legal and constitutional means devised for them earlier by the British colonial government, specifically the Internal Security Act or ISA. The ISA, let me repeat, gave the state the legal and constitutional right to throw in jail, indefinitely and without trial, anyone suspected of being a �subversive,� whether or not he or she actually bore arms against the government, and whether or not he or she was a card-carrying member of the Malayan Communist Party. Note that the ISA did not require �proof beyond reasonable doubt� that a suspect was a �subversive.� Mere suspicion was enough to cause him or her to be arrested by the police and thrown in jail, there to rot indefinitely and without trial. Later, �indefinitely� was liberalized to �two years,� but the effect was the same: incarceration without trial for a very long time. This was the British response to the communist insurgency in the early 1950s, when Malaysia and Singapore were still parts of the British colony known as the Straits Settlements. The British pro-consul Sir Robert Thompson crafted the ISA after analyzing the insurgency problem and coming up with his five-principles solution, the most important of which was the fourth, namely:: �Four: The government must give first priority to identifying and defeating the political subversives, not the guerillas. The communist front organizations and the civil apparatus are the ultimate threats to the nation.� But how were the British and their Malaysian and Singaporean understudies able to tell who was a �subversive� and who was not, since bearing arms and formal membership in the Party were not minimum indicators to earn the label? I honestly do not know. But I can guess that they followed the pragmatic, commonsense rule-of-thumb that �if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it must be a duck,� which is usually attributed to Sen. McCarthy or one of his lieutenants. But, for all we know, McCarthy may have picked it up from the British in Malaya and Singapore � McCarthy and Sir Robert were contemporaries on the world stage - who did arrest and jail everyone who looked, walked and quacked like a duck., whether or not that duck was armed, and whether or not that duck formally believed in the ultimate and inevitable victory of ducks. Another figure of speech that liberals, like my reader in Germany, sneeringly assign to those who criticize or oppose communists, is that we see communists everywhere, such as under every bed. Well, the British and their Malaysian and Singaporean understudies did make it a point to look under every bed, figuratively speaking, and if and when they found a duck hiding under it, they did not hesitate to haul it to the duck pond, since the ISA empowered them to do so. So that would make Sir Robert Thompson the original or, at the very least, one of the earliest, McCarthyists. That would also make those who became prime ministers of Malaysia and Singapore � including Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kwan Yew - McCarthyists of the first order, since they used the ISA to defeat their communist insurgencies. It is an honor to be lumped together with them. Would my nameless German reader and other liberals have preferred that Malaysia and Singapore had not used their McCarthyist ISA to defeat their communist insurgencies? And had adopted instead the lax and permissive Filipino way � sanctified by American-style liberalism � of allowing communist front organizations to openly organize and propagandize and de-stabilize in every sector of society, making media celebrities of communist ideologues, and allowing them to become congressmen, newspaper editors and columnists, TV talk show hosts, senior government bureaucrats and presidents of state universities? I am sure the overwhelming majority of Malaysians and Singaporeans would prefer their governments� McCarthyist methods anytime to the Filipinos� liberal anarchy, in much the same way that the overwhelming majority of Germans would prefer order to chaos. The success of Malaysia and Singapore, due in part to their McCarthyst suppression of their communist insurgencies, puts into worse light the failure of the Philippines, which is due in part to its laxity and permissiveness towards its communist movement. As would most of the hundreds of thousands of Filipino OCWs who have lived and worked in Malaysia or Singapore over the years. The constituency for anarchy and disorder, in the name of liberal democracy, is really very small, and it is largely confined to those who want to use anarchy and disorder to destroy liberal democracy. ***** My friend Mahar Mangahas, of the Social Weather Stations, emailed to ask: �Dear Tony, Why did you choose that title (Civil War?) for your column? Is it your answer to the quest for a Better Idea?� No, Mahar. The point I was driving at was that if the Arroyo government were to go after the communist front organizations with an ISA, but without a Better Idea, it could trigger a Civil War. ***** And speaking of a Better Idea, Professor Clarita Carlos, of the UP Department of Political Science emailed the following reaction: �Dear Mr. Abaya: Splendid!!! You made my day with that very comprehensive and truly cogent argument re the P1 billion peso �counterinsurgency fund.� �I teach a course on the philosophy of social science where we address the fundamental issue of �How do you know what you know?� and like you, I always pound on the students� heads that they cannot go blue in the face arguing with a person. They have to contest data with counter-data with better explanatory power and explanatory appeal�.absent that, they (should) shut up. �Indeed�you are absolutely correct! One can only �overthrow an idea with a better idea��like the Millennium Development Goals of Jeffrey Sachs? Hehehe.� ***** Gil Santos, formerly with the Associated Press (AP), emailed his reaction to Civil War? and the Indonesian Solution: �I was the AP�s Jakarta bureau chief when the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) made the error in 1965. I covered that period with the late Tony Escoda�. �The Chinese doctors from Beijing who were treating Sukarno for his multiple ailments (including renal failure) thought he was nearing his end. And the Beijing (known as Peking then) embassy relayed this to D. N. Aidit, head of the PKI. He ordered the shower of bullets in the Halim Air Base conference room which was being presided by Gen. Yani, then commander of the Indonesian Army. He was killed with the six others.� (Aidit, by the way, was a personal friend and mentor of Joma Sison. ACA). �Gen. Nasution, a Sumatran from Aceh, was the defense minister at that time but was not reported in the Halim conference. After the PKI assassins dumped the seven bodies in a well, another PKI group rushed to the residence of Gen. Nasution (which was a few blocks from the Philippine Embassy on Jalan Diponegoro). �As far as my recollection can dig back, the Nasution house was surrounded by the assassins between midnight and 2 a.m. But Nasution, who was still up and was warned by his own intelligence people, jumped out of the first floor bedroom window and got to the Tsakabirawa and Suliwanggi army divisions (barracks) in Jakarta. �Suharto, then a colonel, was commander of the Suliwanggi division. He took matters in his hands, ordered the occupation of Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI) and announced the army�s total offensive against the PKI, to avenge the death of Gen. Yani and the others. �The rest was crimson history as the main river-canal in Jakarta turned red with the blood of the guesstimated four million suspected communists (of Indonesian-Chinese and Chinese descent). The Indonesian military was the raging Pamplona bull. These killings forced Indonesians with Chinese surnames to use their Indonesian names. Some used their Dutch names�..� Gil also corrected that Gen. Nasution�s first name was Harris, not Hary, as I had written. But I recall it now as Haris, not Harris. ***** Reacting to the same article, Professor Victor A. Lim, of the Asian Institute of Management, cited my concluding paragraph: �Unfortunately no one in the present government has the necessary combination of moral ascendancy, intestinal fortitude and intellectual depth to conceptualize and articulate that Better Idea.� Commented Lim: �I am quoting this in my classes as a succinct definition of Leadership.� ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles since 2001 in www.tapatt.org. Current articles also in tonyabaya.multiply.com and the tapatt.yahoogroups.com. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Reactions to "McCarthyists" Dear Antonio, For some reason, I read your email just now, very delayed. Still, I would like to respond. First, yes my original language is German. But writing something, I use MS Word and I let the English text being checked and corrected to a level that is understandable not only to college graduates but also to people with more common education. This about peculiar English. (Sorry, but your English is still �peculiar.� ACA) Regarding McCarthyism, I think that fighting insurgency and terrorism should not go out of control and just make anyone with a bit different thinking immediately a suspect and as a suspect eligible for jail, without first to prove his or her being guilty. What happens now in RP is near the same, whoever is critical or opposing the ruling government is already a destabilizer, with destabilizing practically a heinous crime. Is the incumbent regime really so easy to destabilize? Not even Marcos during Martial Law has been so restrictive. I remember well News Headlines, calling Imelda an ugly frog and Fidel Ramos the butcher of Mindanao . It was displayed open at the streets and nobody has been arrested or charged with libel. Here, even during the Hitler regime, very offending jokes have been made unchallenged, as a 'steam valve' where people can show opposition. Compare now FG who wants to sue anyone who touches him. Sure, much of all alleged misdeeds of FG are not proven because there are no cases and any investigation in the House or Senate is immediately thrown out. But we have a saying thet 'where is smoke, there is also fire' which would mean why there are so many stories about a person if nothing of all has a real basis. I also read some of your quotations and there, you have been very wrong about Erap. He did not make a gimmik about his knee surgery and he did not try to escape, very contrary. And that he wanted his operation abroad? Always it is told how many excellent clinics an doctors RP has, in abundance. But why then every rich, famous people and politicians go to the USA for even much simpler problems? Remember Mike A. who went to USA for treatment of just a discus hernia, caused by overweight? Very surprising, after just three days he was able to play golf and no philippine doctor would have been able to do the same cure? Let people go for treatment where they want to go, but let Erap also choose treatment from his long time foreign surgeon. Whaatever he is chargedm up to now he has to be treated as innocent since there is no proof or sentence yet. Five years jailed withoutany case in court does not look like verydemocratis justice, the same during Martial Law has been branded as des potic suppression. Be sure I am not linked in any way with the Erap camp, anyway I could not do anything for being a foreigner. But McCarthy and the rules of Malaysia and Singapore are also rather dictatorial than democratic. And not every oppositionist is a communist terrorist as well as not every communist ios a terrorist. Best regards, [email protected], Germany , Nov. 21, 2006 MY REPLY. But why are you bothering yourself with Philippine problems? Don�t you have enough to worry about with Angela Merkel, Muslim immigrants, money-losing Volkswagen, and high unemployment? And why don�t you give your full and real name? OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |