Angelo postmortem / US doomed in Iraq

That’s just fine. Even the harshest domestic critics of the Philippine pullout from Iraq are beginning to see the wisdom of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s decision to save the life of Angelo de la Cruz. It was no freak-out or cop-out, no jelly belly tremor, no stabbing in the back of an America "standing firm" against terrorism in Iraq. It was simply the Filipino deciding what was good for the Filipino in a ruthless, turbulent, changing world. This is the first lesson to learn in the field of foreign policy.

In that context, one can understand and even appreciate the wild, tumultuous welcome accorded Angelo by his countrymen, mostly the masses. Oh God, it was bedlam that welcome! I had never before witnessed such a jubilant uproar accorded a Filipino. Crowds, media and the police crowded every square inch, almost crushing Angelo to death on his return home to Buenavista, Pampanga. And yet he was not a prodigal son come back to roost, a war hero, a Ninoy Aquino, a great celebrity, a "returning Douglas MacArthur".

He was not even handsome or dashing. He was Angelo, just a month ago an anonymous truck-driver plying the dust-swirling roads of the Middle East neighboring Iraq.

So what was the tumult all about? Why was Angelo suddenly catapulted to fame and even it seems fortune, and also, it seems, to hero stature, summoning crowds that would have boggled even the eyes of Marco Polo seeing Chinese hordes for the first time? Simply this. In his captivity, in the throb of imminent death by beheading, in the context of the spiralling guerrilla war in Iraq stabbing America and its allies, the innocent, long-haired truck driver touched a hidden chord in the Philippines.

He touched every family that had a son, daughter, father, mother, close relative working abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Tens of millions actually. This was not civil society, the COPAs of yore, the Kompils of yore, the EDSA militants of yore, the strident studentry of yore yodeling "Marcos, Marcos magnanakaw, magnanakaw si Marcos. Ibagsak!"

This was a novel, unexpected social upheaval from below. .

It was the poor coming together. The poor with the same saga of exploitation, of being forced to work abroad because there were no jobs here, the forgotten, alienated poor, ignored even derided by their government, the rich and powerful, the political system. They owed their government nothing. Now it was the government that owed them. They really labored overseas, many of them as virtual slaves of ruthless foreign masters who pilloried them, raped their women, sent them through the mire.

Surprisingly, unexpectedly, they became a potent social force.

They were good earners. They sent home annually about $8-9 billion, without which our economy would have gone under. In contrast, our senators and congressmen were ripping off the economy in the amount annually of about $24 billion in pork barrel allocations. So our OFWs willy-nilly became the nation’s new heroes. The other dimension: Now they had political power. And they would have used that power against the government if Angelo’s head was chopped off.

That is the context.

It is only within that context that the Angelo de la Cruz phenomenon can be understood. Angelo was no longer the jobless, discarded beast of burden of Philippine society. He became a heroic symbol of the Filipino poor. And if President GMA failed to understand this – golly, she did understand! – she would have become an estranged Robespierre, set upon by the mobs of the French Revolution.

And still, there is a larger context which until now many Filipinos cannot comprehend. The world of the 21st century is a different world. The American imperium, Pax Americana, is beginning to ebb. Since September 21, 2001, when the Twin Towers of New York and part of the Pentagon disintegrated in towering puffs of international terror, the world changed almost overnight.

I do not think GMA sees that yet.

But it was well that she pulled out the Philippine humanitarian contingent from Iraq. She enrolled the Philippines in the wrong war, at the wrong time, at the wrong place. America is now suffering the dire consequences of having invaded Iraq, and dragging the coalition of the willing behind Washington. As we shall explain in the second part of this column, the US eventually will have no choice but to pull out, too. Degrading and shameful as this might be, the world’s only superpower will eat humble pie.

Mrs. President, now you will learn what foreign policy is, what the world is all about. In international relations, there are no permanent friends or allies. There are only permanent interests. Remember this. When America will no longer need us, it will dump us, and all that hooey about special relations with Washington is precisely that – hooey.

I know your heart remains heavy about having to break with America on the Angelo de la Cruz hostage issue. You still hope you can mend fences and George W. Bush will gently stroke your shoulder again. Except that, I think, your patron will have to desert the White House very soon. He built Iraq not in the image of a democratic citadel – as he erroneously and tragically thought he could – but into his political graveyard.

Thank your lucky stars the Philippines pulled out when it could.

* * *

A stunning article is that of Scott Ritter which appeared in the International Herald Tribune several days ago. Ritter was a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 and knows that country like the palm of his hand. He reports that Saddam Hussein‚s lieutenants are now running the Iraqi resistance, including the Islamist groups.

It is when Ritter cuts to the core that he breaks political masonry with his bare hands. He says the political dynamics inside Iraq have been transformed and this went unnoticed by America. "The so-called Islamic resistance is led by none other than former vice president Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, an ardent nationalist, a Sunni Arab and a practicing member of the Sufi brotherhood, a society of Islamic mystics."

The provisional government of Iraq, custom-built by America, is "doomed to fail," he states. "The more it fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up. The more the United States props it up, the more discredited it will be in the eyes of the Iraqi people. All this creates more opportunities yet for the Iraqi resistance to exploit."

A dreary forecast this is, and Scott Ritter digs his pen deeper:

"We will suffer a decade-long nightmare that will lead to the death of thousands more Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. We will witness the creation of a visible and dangerous anti-American movement in Iraq that will one day watch as American troops unilaterally withdraw from Iraq every bit as ignominously as Israel did from Lebanon.

"The calculus is quite simple – the sooner we bring out our forces home, the weaker this movement will be. And, of course, what he observes is true: the longer we stay, the stronger and more enduring the byproduct of Bush’s elective war on Iraq will be.

"There is no elegant solution in our Iraqi debacle. It is no longer a question of winning but rather of mitigating defeat."

Scott Ritter talks about a decade-long US nightmare in Iraq. I believe the nightmare will be much shorter. Already, it has cast long shadows on the US presidential elections, and produced storm clouds over the head President George W. Bush. Democrat presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry has already nosed out Bush in a number of surveys. And now that he has Sen. John Edwards as his vice presidential contender, the two of them could just charm mainstream America to give them a massive vote.

If and when the Democrat Party should win big in the November elections, as I think it will, America’s relations with the world could undergo a sea change. The US government will endeavor posthaste to mend its differences with Europe and the United Nations. Critics have said the Republicans and George Bush "represent the dark underside of American culture". This explains why many nations have recoiled from America’s preemptive war on Iraq.

The first mistake, declaring "total war" on international terror, was compounded by a second mistake, invading Iraq. America’s ultra-modern armed might was set up to fight and destroy known and visible enemies, like nation-states, armies, fleets, massive fortifications, arsenals, bases, not individuals like Osama bin Laden. Terrorists are individuals and as such can elude capture, remain hidden for long periods. Iraq was mistakenly believed to be a sanctuary of bin Laden, and a sprawling arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Another mistake.