A creepy ‘war’ in a world that is no more / Trinidad: End of a legend

It’s a sort of creepy war, if war it indeed is, for we don’t see it at all. Unlike previous ones fought in the open, it has vanished into the shadows. All we are told is that US special forces are now in and around Afghanistan "in hot pursuit" of terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. They don’t mention Osama Bin Laden at all. It is obvious they are in search of "the world’s most dangerous man", he with the long beard, the guarded but melancholy eyes, the ruthless one-dimensional mind whose overpowering passion is to wipe America from the face of the earth.

Osama Bin Laden is possibly hidden in a cave among thousands of caves or an underground labyrinth among thousands of underground labyrinths in a God-forsaken place called Afghanistan, the most forlorn, the most barren, the most decrepit place in the world. It is surreal. The ultimate in military technology gave America the satellite ability to spot a golden dinar dropped by a boy playing in a Muslim courtyard in Kabul, and possibly plug that dinar with a mini-Tomahawk guided by satellite, trim the whiskers off a mullah sauntering into a bazaar.

And this is possibly the supreme irony of it all. The mightiest ground, air and naval forces ever assembled cannot be used. The world has gone back to mediaeval wars. America is reduced to fighting a mediaeval enemy without any land frontiers, where a knife in the dark matters more than a Cruise missile. And the arena of war has been narrowed to prehistoric winding, underground corridors forgotten in the long vastness of time. America has gone up the ring like Mike Tyson only to find out it is fighting a ghost, a wraith, a shadow, a fugitive.

I have a feeling, however, that they will get Osama Bin Laden in the end – dead or alive. But this will not end the "war" as Osama’s biographer says, it will just pour more deadly phials into what Prof. Samuel Huntington says – a clash of civilizations and cultures. This will take years, decades, generations. Humanity, civilization and modern history have just rounded a curve, a curve many of us do not see or understand for we are used, or our minds are conditioned, to just seeing the superficial surface of deeply-rooted phenomena.

In the Philippines, our president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo merely hears American trumpets calling the faithful to war. And like a girl scout she salutes Uncle Sam without nary a thought as to where she will go and where she will take the Philippines. Ah, the Gunga Dins are back! And it’s a pity we have learned so little since we chased off the American bases – Clark and Subic – in 1991. We are romantically back to Bataan and Corregidor, the Filipino laying down his life for the "great American dream" that never materialized in this our precious little patch of earth – Las Yslas Filipinas.

Oh, yes, of course, we Filipinos are against terrorism, particularly the kind that devastated and brutalized New York and Washington, that killed thousands of innocent people, and our hands are as knuckled and white and furious like those of Americans.

But we must not lose our power to think, to reflect, to assess, to assess, to analyze. We are not joining, of course, the tens of thousands, maybe even millions in Pakistan and the Arab world for whom Islam is the spearpoint of an emerging and extremely dangerous Hate America campaign. But there are voices we must listen to.

One of them is the internationally renowned preacher Pat Robertson, head of the 700 Club, an American of the "purest ray serene" whom I have interviewed several times. Nobody can question Pat’s patriotism, his spirituality, his dedication. He has issued a statement portions of which I quote:

"We have thought we were invulnerable. We have been so concerned about money, so concerned about material things, the interest of people are on their health, are on their finances, their pleasures, their sexuality. We have been so self-absorbed. The churches, as well as the population, have allowed rampant pornography on thousands of sites on the Internet, rampant secularism, the occult to be broadcast, babies to be slaughtered (through abortion) in our society.

"We have a Court that has essentially stuck its finger in God’s eye and said we’re going to legislate you out of our schools, we’re getting to take your Commandments from off courthouse steps in various states, we’re not going to let children read the commandments of God, we’re not gonna let the Bible be read, not allow prayer in our schools. We have insulted God in the highest levels of government! And then we ask, why does this (world trade) happen? Well, it’s happening because God Almighty is lifting his protection from us. And once the protection is gone, we’re vulnerable."

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Preacher Pat Robertson has called for a massive religious revival and concludes: "We have sown the wind and we are reaping the whirlwind."

I may not fully agree with the exhortations and the strident religious, moral outrage of Pat Robertson, but he has struck a chord many eminent historians have spotted with more measured language informed with the current of events that have dug deep into civilization’s past. Again, we go back to Prof. Samuel Huntington of Harvard whose Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order has gone back to center stage with unaccustomed pith and power. He writes:

"The belief that non-Western peoples should adopt Western values, institutions and culture is immoral because of what would be necessary to bring it about. The almost universal reach of European power in the late nineteenth century and the global dominance of the United States in the late twentieth century spread much of Western civilization across the world. European globalism however is no more. American hegemony is receding if only because it is no longer needed to protect the United States against a Cold War Soviet-style military threat. Culture, as we have argued, follows power. If non-Western societies are again to be shaped by Western culture, it will happen only as a result of expansion, development, and impact of Western power. Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism. . .

"The West no longer has the economic or demographic dynamism required to impose its will on other societies and any effort to do so is also contrary to Western values of self-determination and democracy. As Asian and Muslim civilizations begin more and more to assert the universal relevance of their cultures, Westerners will come to appreciate more and more the connection between universalism and imperialism."

And if we must go back, another famous historian Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History) pounded the "parochialism and impertinence of the West manifested in the ‘egocentric illusions’ that the world revolved around it." And along the same lines Edward Mortimer indicated, it is "increasingly likely" that Western civilization is coming to an end and "increasingly likely to intrude into international affairs." Meaning, of course, that the "inter-civilizational clash of political ideas spawned by the West is being supplanted by an intercivilizational clash of culture and religion." Without knowing it, the Philippines and its leadership toss and twist in this sea of historic turbulence, unknowing and oblivious to the fact that we too will be caught up, a cute little pawn preferring to curtsy and blow the bugle of America. Marionettes we have always been and marionettes we will remain. We should pause, we should think, we should reflect.

Once in a while, Gloria, stick your wet forefinger in the wind.

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It was a ring brawl I shouldn’t have witnessed. It ended in one minute and 18 seconds of the twelfth round with defending champion Felix Trinidad down on the canvas, virtually helpless at the hands of Bernard Hopkins, now the indisputed middleweight champion of the world. Trinidad was my idol, almost everybody’s idol, the Puerto Rican phenom hitherto unbeaten with a 40-0 fight record. He could box, he could fight, he could pulverize everybody until he met African-American Bernard Hopkins who dominated the fight from the very beginning. Hopkins held the WBC and IBF belts of the middleweight crown but was an underdog when he came up the ring at the Madison Square Garden Saturday.

He was a revelation. His jabs were always on target, he was faster, more wicked in the infighting, absolutely unafraid of Trinidad, delivered the harder punches. Though 36 against Trinidad’s 28 years, Hopkins kept hopping like a mountain boulder while in the last two rounds, Trinidad’s legs were turning to tallow, twice buckling in a furious exchange. Almost midway in the 12th and last rounds, Hopkins – pushing the fight with undiminished rage – hit Trinidad with a crushing right to the jaw. The Puerto Rican fell on his haunches, still determined to get up, but it was over. His seconds waved it was the end. It was the end. The legend shook his head, got up, the crown already having toppled from his almost shaven head.

There will be a rematch, I am sure, in the future, but this Bernard Hopkins is a tough hombre and he will win again.