The struggle to look like just a regular guy

NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. -- The Philippine Army assault on the mountain stronghold of the fanatical Islamic Abu Sayyaf is getting significant coverage here in the United States.

The New York Times headlined yesterday (Monday) an inside-page story: "Philippine Troops Press Attack on Rebels Defying Threats to Kill Hostages."

In USA Today, the report was entitled: "Philippine Soldiers Continue to Hammer at Muslim Camp."

The stories said that the Moro rebels had "beheaded two hostages after the authorities refused demands for the release of Muslim militants jailed in the United States, including the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993."

That's the angle which has caught attention over here, in New York City in particular, where the Twin Towers "bombing" took place in an attempt by Muslim terrorists to strike at the heart of Wall Street.

The American government, of course, has rejected all bids to free the imprisoned mastermind and planner of that violent caper, terrorist Ramzi Yousef, who is buddy-buddy with the Abu Sayyaf leader Khadaffy Janjalani and who, for months, hung out in Basilan and mainland Mindanao helping "train" the Abu Sayyaf and arranging logistics and weapons for them from the terrorist-financier, Afghanistan-based Osama bin Laden.

It was Bin Laden who was accused of plotting the destruction of the two US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya not long ago.

The Times said here that 500 government troops were fighting an "estimated 230 to 250 rebels in the rescue attempt in Basilan" (about 550 miles south of Manila) where 27 hostages are still being held by the Moro group. It's now generally accepted that two of the originally 29 hostages were "beheaded" by the Moro bandits and that the insurgents are threatening to also behead their five remaining male prisoners including a Catholic priest.

Maj. General Diomedio Villanueva, chief of the AFP Southern Command, was quoted as stating: "I feel it's about time we stop talking with these fanatics; otherwise they will just kill the hostages one by one."

It's tough that our government military forces are taking casualties in the much-too-delayed operation, but as Villanueva pointed out, what recourse do we have?

What intrigues me is the portion of the report published here to the effect that our soldiers are "pushing ahead with airstrikes and artillery barrages. . ." Do we still have airplanes and helicopters? The lamebrained way in which our Defense and AFP officials have been weakly announcing that we don't have any "money" to procure newer and better warplanes and helicopters surely must have encouraged the rebels, including the already half-moribund New People's Army (NPA) cadres, to believe our cash-strapped, poorly-equipped men were push-overs.

As for the "captured" 11 relatives of the Abu Sayyaf leader Janjalani, now in the hands of vigilantes, I hate to recommend any barbaric methods of retaliation. The Muslim fanatics and mujahideen are obviously counting on "our side" being decent and "civilized." But the remedy is in the Old Testament of the Bible -- "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

The cruel Islamic "warriors" of the Abu Sayyaf give no quarter. Perhaps it's time they were told to expect none. It's sad that, by their brutal approach to rebellion, they've poisoned the Easter message of love and hope.

"Father forgive them," Jesus had said on the cross. Forgiveness, alas, is in short supply this holy season.

Although almost all Cuban-Americans are in a state of anger and somewhat violent agitation over the "kidnapping" of the six-year-old boy, Elian Gonzalez, from the home of his anti-Castro relatives in "Little Havana", the section of Miami City where Cuban exiles and refugees are concentrated, the Clinton government seems to be weathering the "storm."

Most Americans appear -- while disquieted by those dramatic photographs of a helmeted, visored, INS (Immigration & Naturalization Service) agent pointing a submachinegun at the man holding an obviously terrified Elian in his arms, and grabbing at the boy, plus another photo of Elian, sobbing hysterically and crying out "Help me! Help me!" as he is being bundled into a government van in the arms of a woman agent -- to have shrugged and apparently decided to just grin and bear it.

The raid and its aftermath have, of course, severely damaged America's image overseas. In Great Britain and Western Europe, that huge Associated Press photograph of the INS agent scowling ferociously at the boy and the fisherman cradling him has been appearing on front pages with captions like "America's Shame" in several languages. Just goes to show that when you're the world's only remaining "superpower", nobody loves you.

It was, indeed, hamfisted for Bill Clinton and his Attorney-General Janet Reno to have acted so drastically, but that's how executive decisions are made... and, as they say, "let the chips fall where they may."

A poll here, however, stated 57 percent of the Americans surveyed in the immediate aftermath of the "seizure" (that's the way the Miami Herald called it) of little Elian said they felt it was "okay."

What Clinton and Reno must really be worrying about is whether the incident will adversely affect the candidacy of their Democratic Party bet, Vice President Al Gore. They're counting on the probability that once the fuss and furor simmer down, and the fickle media spotlight moves on to some other piece of "breaking news", the Gonzalez tragedy -- or comedy, or whatever -- will be yesterday's story.

For instance, when this writer was in New York last year, every day, every hour, the television images were rife with the refugee crisis, the Serb atrocities, the miles of hopeless-looking and bedraggled Kosovar Albanian refugees (the TV camera always focuses on the "beautiful" but haggard and terrified children, and the grievously maimed and wounded), plus explosive scenes of American and NATO aircraft bombing and rocketing Belgrade in Yugoslavia.

Nowadays, nobody thinks of Kosovo anymore. If anything, the former Muslim refugees, especially the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas who were America's and NATO's "allies", have become today's bullies and villains. The former pathetic Muslims are doing to the Christian Serbs what the Serb militia and army formerly did to them -- torching their chapels and churches, blowing up their apartments and houses, harassing them and kicking them around. When the shoe is on the other foot, that foot starts kicking in revenge -- that's what my years of reportage on many fronts has, sadly, taught me.

Wasn't it our own Jose Rizal who warned: "Freedom? What freedom? When the slaves of today only become the tryants of tomorrow?"

But the world's like that. It's probably part of the curse of Original Sin.

As the political campaign heats up here, the Republican Party contender, Texas Governor George C. Bush, is stoutly insisting that "his blood is red, not blue." Not "red" as in Communist or Marxist, of course -- but if cut, Bush pleads, he bleeds just like you and me.

Bush is trying to get the message across to the "tire kickers" -- who're condemning him as a blueblood who was born rich, with a silver spoon in his mouth -- that he's just a regular Joe, who eats "fritos" and (unlike his opponent Al Gore) "wasn't raised in Washington, DC."

In short, he's no snob. He was born down in Texas on the farm -- so what if the farm was full of cattle and pumping oil wells? In a dispatch from Austin, Texas, written by NYT reporter Frank Bruni, Bush let's it be known that his appetites "veer toward Cheez Doodles, Fritos and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches," while his attire consists of "unfussy suits, plain neckties and, from time to time, cowboy boots as big and brash as the state of Texas."

Aw shucks, fellas, simple Georgie Bush ("back in the saddle again, out there where a friend is a friend") is just a downhome "kinda guy". "Trendy television shows?" Don't watch 'em. "Fancy schmancy vacations?" Doesn't like 'em. "Literary novels?" Don't read them. Who has the patience for all that showy verbiage, "especially if there's a good baseball game on the tube?"

As Bush reminded a crowd at a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, last Monday night: "I didn't come up in a hotel on Connecticut Avenue. I was raised on Ohio Street in Midland, Texas."

Bush has been trying to add weight to his image and "give himself gravitas," while continuing to project the folksy touch. Analysts, however, are asking whether he won't end up knotted up in a bundle of contradictions: "Can a candidate simultaneously prove he is ordinary enough to connect with all types of Americans and extraordinary enough to lead them?"

This election, when all is said and done, will center on "personality." Bush takes a dig at Al Gore as an "invented" man, trained and slotted for the Presidency by his pedigreed family from the moment of birth. This is difficult to put over when everyone knows it was George's father, Bush Senior, who already had a crack at sitting in the White House. When you recall that brother Jeb Bush is also Governor of Florida (Elian Gonzalez's guv, if you want to put it that way), the word "dynasty" inevitably crops up.

Bush makes it a point to talk about hunting, fishing, and the fact that his wife, Laura, whom he takes pains to identify as a former school librarian, was "raised in Midland, Tex., which is a lot closer to Phoenix than it is to New York." He burbles: "It's out in the desert. It's good country, and we were raised there."

As a boy who went to school in nasty, villainous New York (the Bronx even), I kinda resent that. After all, didn't Bushie-Baby go to Yale? (Is that where they invented the Yale lock? Just kiddin'). Bush has let it be known that, if elected President, his regular -- vacations would be on his ranch near Waco, Texas, not on Martha's Vineyard. (Didn't pater and mater, and the Bush clan, observe their holidays in many years past -- every year at that, in Kennebunkport, Maine, which is suspiciously as hoity-toity as the Martha's Vineyard of the Kennedys? Give us a break).

It's evident that, in a election campaign, everybody is trying to look like Erap. Our Erap Estrada, I mean, para sa mahirap. After "election"? More caviar than bagoong, I'd say.