That ‘feeling good’ bombardment doesn’t square with reality

The Americans aren’t just here, as yesterday’s headlines proclaimed. They’re already trained and fully equipped 100 Filipino special forces and commando troopers in a wide range of skills, from combat to "hostage negotiation."

The usual gripers will loudly accuse the Americans of meddling in our country. As for me, anything they can "teach" us is welcome, but their logistics and hardware would be even more welcome. It’s time we sent specially-trained and exercise-hardened units into the brush after the elusive Abu Sayyaf. The trouble with so many of our Army and Marines, although we can’t fault their courage, is that they were young 20-year-olds 20 years ago when they were fighting the Muslim Blackshirts and the Bangsa Moro rebels. Even iron men, like machinery, slow down, if not rust with age.

The Americans, if they’re serious, can help us best, and simultaneously pursue their war against terrorism here, if they provide us the weaponry, ammunition, and other useful equipment such as field communications systems, not to forget helicopter gunships and fast naval patrol craft. They need not do any fighting here. As Great Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill once told his friend, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Give us the tools and we will do the job."

Unfortunately, the Abu Sayyaf often have a better communications set-up and more modern radios than our boys have, not to mention the latest in automatic weapons and RPG rickets. For years they were supplied by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, either directly or through terrorist Ramzi Youssuf, or through his brother-in-law Khalifa. Scores of Arab "Afghans" arrived here to instruct the Abus and other Moro insurgent groups – and they’re still on the ground in Mindanao, from Yemenis to Saudis, Kuwaitis and other Arab nationalities.

In fact, thanks to bin Laden’s Al Qaeda set-up, there are still 20,000 Arabs in Afghanistan, but the Pushtuns or whom they look down, are increasingly disenchanted with them. Reports out of Afghanistan say that almost as soon as the Taliban forces, who protected them, moved out of an area, for instance in the direction of their frontlines against the encroaching Northern Alliance, the Pushtuns would pounce on and kill their neighborhood Arabs, robbing them of their Rolex watches and motorcycles.

In the Pushtun tradition, it is disgraceful to beg, but honorable to rob and kill. It’s the custom.

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Suddenly, everyone around the world has become an "expert" on Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the fierce Pushtuns (Pasthuns, Pathans, as they are variously called). Many millions more words have been written, radio-television commentary made, graphic photos and newsreels, in a single month than have been devoted to Afghanistan over the past 20 years. Understanding the "Afghans" is the flavor of the year.

The American bombardment of Taliban and other Afghan targets can’t last much longer. I won’t attempt to second-guess the Americans, Brits, and their coalition partners – and certainly they aren’t talking to journalists, especially their own. A "free press" not only spills the beans, putting the lives of soldiers in the fields, airmen and sailors at risk, but frequently hams things up.

Consider the fact that by now they have hundreds of foreign correspondents in Afghanistan alone, as well as thousands in Washington DC, London, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul and all the other "wartime" capitals. They’re all hungry for a story – any story at all to please their editors and appease the voracious appetite of the reading and listening public.

At the same time, the reclusive Taliban only invites media people to view scenes of bomb and missle destruction that demonstrate how the Yanks and Brits are blowing their country apart. There are the usual gaunt and terrified faces of starving children, stream of pathetic refugees, miserable clumbs of humanity. The watching world forgets that children starved, families fled repression as refugees, and were miserable under the iron rule of the religious fanaticism of the Taliban. There is now a new, very visible culprit, the American-British "all-out" attack.

The US and its allies are losing the propaganda "war", no thanks to the weeks of aerral assault that appear to only have resulted in pounding a country already in rubble into even smaller shards and pieces of rubble. Every bomb dropped, every "Tomahawk" and Cruise missile launched, increases the danger of making tragic mistakes – and these errors have already begun to happen.

Never mind the ferment in the Islamic world. Americans had better disabuse their minds, early on, of the naïve thought that they can "convince" the Islamic masses and win the "hearts and minds" of the Muslims. It wasn’t just bin Laden, but the anti-American preachings of the past three decades, from the late Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran (who lashed out at America as "The Great Satan"), and every frustrated Arab nationalist from Nasser to Ghaddafi and Assad, who resented the advance of America’s burger empires, its Coca-colonialism, and – not the least – its decades of supporting Israel. C’mon, don’t deny it.

Perhaps, tragically, one of the reasons the ruthless hijackers dispatched two planes crashing into the New York’s Twin Towers could be because many of the 1,000 banks and corporations in the World Trade Center and Wall Street were perceived to be the underpinnings of a pro-Israel financial empire. Sounds ghoulish, and even childish, to mention it, but, come to think of it, there is a mean and childish streak in every terrorist’s nature.

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I applaud New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for having rejected a $10 million "donation" for the Twin Towers victims from a Saudi prince because the prince intemperately remarked that the US ought to reexamine its Middle East policy vis-à-vis Israel, hinting that this might have motivated the hijackers and terrorists. Giuliani reacted in characteristic fashion. He rebuffed the donation and all but chewed out the Saudi. And yet, upon reflection, there’s some truth in what that reckless-tongued Saudi royal said. The trouble is that you don"t say such awful things when you’ve just visited the terrible carnage and debris at "Ground Zero" (when we went there, the rubble was smoking and the area stank of death – and, from last night’s TV footage, it’s still smoking). Never seek to find "excuses" for terrorists, particularly in a country ravaged and humiliated by their acts.

There’s a growing school of thought, by the way, that the US should be bombing Saudi Arabia, not just the Taliban. The Saudi monarchy has been funding terrorist movements practically all over the globe, trusting that by doing so they will be safe from terrorists themselves.

In his book which I’ve already quoted before, counter-terrorist expert and researcher Yossef Bodansky said (Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America) that "Saudi Arabia has been second only to Pakistan in the extent of its support for the Taliban. Saudi funds have been instrumental in the Taliban’s rise to and hold on power. Saudi support for the Taliban has stemmed from Riyadh’s determination to find an outlet – as far away from Saudi Arabia as possible – for the Islamic Saudi zeal of radicalized youth."

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The Saudi government stripped bin Laden of his Saudi passport on April 7, 1994, declaring piously that "he committed acts that adversely affected the brotherly relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and some other countries." In the beginning, the Saudis, particularly one prince who was an early mentor of bin Laden, lauded Osama’s movement – but they finally discovered that one of his aims was to overthrow the "corrupt" House of Saud. Serves them right. The Saudis meddle shamelessly all over, including in Mindanao.

If you will recall, eight of the 19 airplane hijackers last September 11 were Saudis, and the rest Egyptians and other Arab nationalities. None of the terrorists involved in that cruel escapade were Afghans, whether Pushtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks or Hasaras.

Since Saudi Arabia has been posing as an "ally" of the US and the West (and screamed for help when Iran’s Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait and threatened to roll his tanks into Saudi), it has been successful in this card trick. But make no mistake about it. As keeper of the two most sacred shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina (a third of the "Dome of the Rock" in Jerusalem), the Saudis impose an Islamic rule almost as harsh as the Talibans.

Women must be covered, are not permitted to drive, and, if the government had its druthers, would be kept in purdah at home. Women cannot go out unless accompanied by husband, brother, or a close male relative. If a woman is found to be "outside" with a man, not her husband, brother, or cousin, she can be slapped in jail. If caught in "adultery" she can be executed. Beheading "criminals" is the execution of choice in Saudi Arabia.

Speaking of "reach", Saudi Aramco already owns 40 percent and a controlling voice in our own Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC).

Finally, guess where the zealous teachers of the religious schools which trained the Taliban came from? They were Pakistanis and Afghan "refugees" during the anti-Soviet war who fled to Riyadh and Jeddah and were trained in Saudi Arabia’s strict Islamist schools. Both the Pakistanis and the Saudis are the "fathers" of the Taliban.

Yet, the US dares not face that truth. Nor do we: because we have scores of thousands of OFWs, Filipino workers employed all over, from the oil fields to the hospitals of Saudi Arabia. Money, money, money, truly, makes the world go ’round.