GMA must listen / Goco and Aquila Legis

No, it’s not all rehash and rhetoric. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has drawn a bead on the raging controversy about Balikatan 02-1 which to her is "reminiscent of the old bases debate and the debate on Vietnam that resurfaced again." She is hurt, even furious it seems, but the president is fighting as she has never fought before. She has staked everything, her bid for the presidency in 2004, on her conviction Balikatan will work like a charm in Basilan and will finally rip the guts out of the Abu Sayyaf.

On this score, we wish her well. The monster that is Abu Sayyaf must be beheaded once and for all – if necessary with the help of US combat troops – and here she has the support of a great majority of the Filipino citizenry. As this writer has said earlier, we are willing to swallow our pride, turn our back for the nonce on all the constitutional obstacles, to get the job done. But like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said re America’s armed invasion of Afghanistan, "it must be short and targeted." And if it turns out to be that way in Basilan as it was in Afghanistan, then hooray, let’s bring out the champagne.

But this is as far as we go.

And this is where we take issue with la Gloria when she says all the verbal opposition is warmed-over Vietnam bunk and bases baloney. It ain’t. And she is even more wrong when she avers only the "communists" are against her and so must be swatted off the table like a pesky, irrelevant fly. Certainly, Madam President, Vice President and Foreign Secretary Tito Guingona is no communist. And he has taken a very strong stand – principled and very patriotic I believe – against Balikatan 02-1. And so have a lot of others, including a number of senators and congressmen, and they are not communists.

In the end, when all is said and done, this is a deeply sensitive nationalist issue, and dissenting Filipinos have all the right to air their opinions and beliefs.

So I suggest that you listen and listen well.

The heart of the matter goes to the basic document – the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) signed in 1951. This was the time the world was waist-deep in the Cold War and fears of a Chinese communist invasion were rife. The MDT had a clarion ring. And this was the US and the Philippines would come to each other’s military assistance to repel external, repeat external aggression or invasion. In other words, a third country external to both. Each signatory nation would act in accordance with its constitutional processes," unlike the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which specified joint automatic and immediate military action on the part of all its members if one of them were invaded.

Now, not by any stretch of the imagination can the Abu Sayyaf be considered or designated a foreign invader or external aggressor.

Hate and abominate them as we may, they are Filipinos, occupying Philippine territory. And the provisions of the MDT do not apply. The Abu Sayyaf are aggressors certainly, bandits and killers, rapists and kidnapers, murderers and marauders. But they are not foreign aggressors. The claim of the US government that they have links with Al- Qaeda and possibly Osama bin Laden does not make them foreign invaders. That may exist in President George W. Bush’s mind but we Filipinos are not, cannot be beholden to that mind. We are a sovereign country, tracing our existence as a nation-state to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

The Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) is an offshoot of the MDT. As an offshoot, it cannot be twisted to justify in any way possible the participation of US combat forces in Basilan even as an "observer appendage’ of the so-called joint US-Philippines military exercises. The moment US troops engage in active combat in Basilan against the Abu Sayyaf, this would be a clear violation of the (let me spell it out) the Mutual Defense Treaty. It does not really matter whether they are provoked or not provoked (If fired upon, they will retaliate, so the justification goes).

So far, we follow and we agree however reluctantly. The war in Basilan must be short, targeted and the only combat target for extermination is the Abu Sayyaf. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. If we have to vomit out the Abus, as underground drainage leading to the sea vomits out rubbish and refuse, and we need the Americans for that, so be it.

But now we approach that line drawn in the ground, a line fraught with peril. So let’s cut out the crap this is all a rehash of Vietnam. Vietnam was a prize colonial possession of France which the US took over, seeking to prolong colonial rule and domination over huge territorial slices of Asia. As the critics said then the US was fighting a war at the wrong time, in the wrong place, with the wrong enemy. Gen. Charles de Gaulle said as much.

But now let’s ask the gut questions.

Supposing, Balikatan 02-1 cannot finish off the Abu Sayyaf in six months? Will the US troops remain in Basilan? Supposing they suffer casualties, unacceptable to them, and they ask for huge reinforcements from Washington? There lies the first big dilemma. Until now, there is no "exit strategy" for the US forces. Suppose the US troops unwittingly get into a fire fight with MILF and MNLF forces in Basilan? Wouldn’t that widen the war and compel George W. Bush to give orders to "kill every terrorist there is in Mindanao?" Suppose the Abu Sayyaf shifts the battleground to other regions in Mindanao? Would the forces of Balikatan 02-1 follow in hot pursuit? Suppose George W. Bush decides the NPA guerillas too are terrorists in the cross-hairs of the US war on international terrorism, would the US forces rampage over to Luzon and the Visayas and open up with all barrels blazing?

GMA is in dire need of US assistance – military, economic financial as the nation toboggans into major crisis after major crisis – would she be able to contain and resist the American colossus? As Bush said, if they can’t do it, we shall do it. Or would she decide to place the fate of the Philippines in American hands regardless of what the Constitution mandates. Already, she is into this wild, wooly and cockeyed idea of hiring New York’s Rudy Giuliani as a "consultant" to help restore "peace and order" to the Philippines as he did in the Big Apple. Spare us, Ms. President. If you do that, we might as well be the 53rd state of the United States of America.

All this could be a suicidal leap in the dark, Ma’m. Think it over. Do not prove John Hay right when he said: "There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going. When they seem going they come. Diplomats, women and crabs."

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There is a letter of former Solicitor General Raul Goco to The Philippine STAR denying that he ever told me he had communicated to the Court of Appeals seeking privileged treatment for the convicted Aquila Legis cutthroats convicted for the brazen killing of Ateneo law neophyte Lenny Villa. He writes: "I am sorry, Mr. Benigno, I don’t recall at all having conversed with you about this matter. What I do remember is that we met in one social gathering and you asked me if I were a member of he Aquila Legis and I answered in the affirmative which is a fact." At another juncture, he writes: "When the case was assigned to a Division in the OSG, I inhibited or disqualified myself from participating, being member of the involved fraternity (not a high priest). I lost track of the case or its developments nor did I discuss the same with my Deputies."

Now, now, Raul, both of us must be getting old, and mists are everywhere in the footpaths of memory. So it’s your word against mine. But I have always been careful, cautious and very circumspect as a journalist, especially when I quote luminaries like you. And on a very sensitive, even explosive issue like the Aquila Legis’ Neanderthal treatment of Lenny Villa. Lenny Villa’s mother, Gerrie, just called me up, saying they had officially protested the Court of Appeals’ decision acquitting 19 Aquilans of the conspiracy charge. Well and good, those acquitted hooligans, who never spent a single day in jail, should be kicked into the calaboose where they belong. To me they are just as bad as the Abu Sayyaf. The latter have no pretensions whatsoever to being civilized human beings. The convicted Aquilans are legally certified Christians, de buenas familias, students then and now law graduates of Ateneo de Manila University, the Society of Jesus’ crème de la crème. And they have violated all the laws of God and man. Beasts they are. Crawlers that can slip through any closed door.

Raul, I will swear on any stack of bibles that you said what I said you did. You may now deny it and I cannot blame you. I also stick to my guns in recalling (hell, it was printed in some newspapers) that two Solicitors-General also wrote the Court of Appeals and sought the same privileged treatment for the convicted Aquilans. Purely recommendatory? Of course. But when an Aquilan recommends to a fellow Aquilan, there is the branding iron of cave culture – one for all and all for one.

Thanks, anyway, Raul, for the part of your letter which ends: "Nevertheless, this incident will not diminish my respect and admiration for Mr. Benigno, his fearless reportage and incisive opinions, and I remain always a reader of his column."