War just days away?/ Davide for president?

Is it really only days away? The winged heralds of peace have withdrawn, it seems, and the drums of war – grim, stark, deafening – have taken over. If present US plans do not miscarry, in about a week’s time or so, 3000 bombs will rain on Iraq. About 250,000 combat troops, mostly American, will lay siege on this shuddering Gulf country about the size of California. No doubt, literally and figuratively, Iraq will be levelled to the ground. Saddam Hussein will probably fight with his people to the death. Or will disappear during the carnage as Osama bin Laden did when America descended on Afghanistan with relentless fury.

Or Saddam at the eleventh hour might capitulate, raise the white flag of surrender, and spill all the guts of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in public for the occupying US troops to confiscate and destroy. This is not likely. What is likely is Saddam will never be taken alive. The Iraqi military and people could be left to themselves to decide whether the honor of Islam resides in mass surrender or mass annihilation at the hands of the world’s only superpower.

Whatever it will be, the whole world waits and watches.

In strictly military terms, this impending war is simply a mini-war. All that Iraq really has is a prayer, and the wailing chants of the muezzins directed on-high for the Almighty to be merciful. But that is not the point. The point is that if this war should explode, mini and one-sided as it might be, the whole world will convulse with it, maybe bleed with it, certainly suffer intense economic and political pain. It is a war whose ganglia, like veins of lightning, will streak all over the world because it is a war humanity does not want, seeks to prevent and repel at all costs.

It is a war that will tear at the heart of Islam. The Muslim world feels America’s war against international terror is really directed at Islam. Wasn’t it a clutch of Muslim terrorists largely from Saudi Arabia that upended the Twin Towers and the Pentagon September 11, 2001? Look at the bearded face of Bin Laden, a Saudi aristocrat turned terrorist.

It is a war that has taken a terrible toll on the Atlantic Alliance and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). This was the Alliance that provided the political, ideological and military masonry for American and Western supremacy in two world wars.

It is a war that has ignited world outrage against the US. The world feels the war is brutal and unnecessary, and that Saddam Hussein must be given a few months more to disarm. Wasn’t that the recommendation of inspectors Hans Blix and ElBaradei? Isn’t America therefore a big, bad bully?

It is a war that has switched the world’s geo-political axis from America, Europe and the West to Asia. In the huge and sprawling continent of Asia and the Pacific, China looms to challenge the US as a political and economic superpower in 20 years.

It is also in Asia where the world of Islam originates, crawls and slithers like a serpent. And there is no doubt in the minds of many it is here where the US and Islam will go for each other’s throats eventually and squeeze till one or the other dies.

And so it is that the impending war in Iraq is a Pandora’s Box.

Tear the lid off – through war. And you have a world that will spin. Not a world that will explode in a plethora of wars but a world riven into a myriad of quarreling and contesting powers, a world splintering into power or regional blocs, a world poorer than before because it will take years before the international economy can recover, a world exchanging old gods for new gods, a world America can no longer hope to easily dominate because Pax Americana, like Julius Caesar, will stagger from the many knives buried in its back.

America’s "total war" against international terrorism – when you look back – should never have been declared.

But it had to be declared at the instant because the nation was attacked and brutalized. And it was declared because the man at the helm, George W. Bush, was hardly a political man. He was a man of the ancient Bibles and religions where an eye was an eye and a tooth was a tooth. And his voice at the time touched the soul of an America aghast at the sight of the World Trade Tower and the Pentagon disintegrating before its very eyes. It was an America convulsing in pain, not cowering maybe but ready to be led by a Texan who promised his countrymen redemption, who was fearless, who would kill, who would not allow anybody to stop him.

And so there we are today. It is a world we no longer understand. And because we do not understand, it is a world we fear. Old, seemingly indestructible alliances have gone glimmering. We Filipinos want to side with America but now we are scared of siding with America because America’s is up against the world and its war against terror has the Philippines for a "second front" and we don’t know what that means.

Is the Yankee a blessing or a curse? We are a small nation and already the winds of war are whining in our midst. That big bomb exploding at the Davao International Airport, killing 21, injuring about 150, could one day explode in Metro Manila, maybe not once but twice, claim hundreds of lives and stick the bludgeon of Mars into our unwilling arms. We don’t know.

All we know is that we are lost and the hoofbeats of God riding a horse up high are not likely to descend on us soon.

* * *

We have it from the grapevine that Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide might consider running for the presidency in 2004. He had always issued a flat no to every offer, every suggestion that he seek the nation’s highest post. He never even wanted to discuss it. The line stopped at the highest magistracy of the Supreme Court which Davide has served with superlative leadership. After that he would retire. That was enough. Go down in history as the best chief justice the Philippines ever had.

But there was this powerful, well-financed, highly connected group that finally had his ear. This time, we are informed, Hilario Davide listened but did not answer yes or no. He reportedly replied he needed time to think about it and maybe, just maybe, he would decide middle of this year.

If he decides yes, that would throw a monkey wrench into the Lakas combine’s persistent and determined campaign to get Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco into the presidential loop. The assessment is that in a choice between Cojuangco and Davide, the ruling party would have no hesitation choosing the Supreme Court chief justice. Cojuangco represents the past, is weighed down by the baggage of Ferdinand Marcos as his top crony and must have been in on the plot to assassinate Ninoy Aquino.

Davide, on the other hand, was the star performer of the Senate presidential impeachment trial which he presided with astonishing skill and a legal mind that bristled with surprising dispatch and clarity.

The question is: Would he fit into a job – the presidency — which would require handling the reins of power at the very top? This, say many, would require a versatile, sometimes ruthless and imperious hand, that could, when needed, shortcut and perhaps even set aside legal means to get the engine of the presidency running. Here, I am reminded of Gen. Charles de Gaulle, high-minded and always, always guided by the luminous light of the republic, a man so unscrupulous right was right, wrong was wrong and there was nothing in between.

And yet, when I was a political science student in Paris, I was told by highly informed sources le grand Charles at times utilized le pegue (the underworld) to get rid of entrenched political thugs and thieves who strove mightily to undermine his presidency. They had to be put away, and they were put away. Davide’s critics say he has tunnel vision, and would transform Malacañang into an adjunct of the Supreme Court. Sed lex dura lex. The law is hard but that is the law.

I don’t know. But if Hilario Davide indeed throws his hat into the presidential ring, he would be the only presidential candidate who could give Raul Roco a run for his money. Sen. Panfilo Lacson still awaits Erap Estrada’s endorsement. Without it, Mr. Lacson is three sheets to the wind, all strut, unable to get his shoulder behind political wisdom, perceived by many as a dangerous man, a capo di tutti cappi with an itchy vision and even itchier hands.

Who else? Fernando Poe Jr. remains transfixed in silence and that is utterly negative for an action movie star who lives by his fists. Sen. Noli de Castro has overtaken Panfilo Lacson in the presidential listings. And yet, everybody knows Noli de Castro does not have it in him to be president, the prince of broadcast gab he might be. Danding Cojuangco right now is way, way down in the surveys.