An invitation to the White House

La Presidenta has been wishing on a star, in fact on all the stars, that she gets an "invitation" to the White House to pow-wow with the Great White Father, President George W. Bush. Now there’s a glimmer of hope that GMA may get her wish.

The word from across the Pacific is that when they meet in Helsinki (Finland) this September 10, Mr. Bush may extend La Gloria an invite to a working lunch in the near future. The fact that after the Helsinki summit, where she will deliver the Keynote Address on "Energy Cooperation and Security," the President is flying to New York City for meetings in the United Nations and with business leaders, may be timely.

"How about popping over for lunch," perhaps Dubya will suggest.

But there’s a condition. Even just a working lunch in the Holy of Holies of the American Empire doesn’t come easy. Scores of chiefs and heads of state have been queuing up for such a photo opportunity, and a post-prandial impromptu "press conference" featuring Bush on one side and the visiting VIP on the other.

GMA’s ticket to the White House is premised on a few IFs. (1) How she prosecutes the war on terrorism. For example, our military has over the past two days been in hot pursuit of Abu Sayyaf terrorist leader Khaddafy Janjalani and two Jemaah Islamiya jihadis who’re wanted in connection with the Bali Bombings in which 202 were killed – many of them Australians – in two across-the-street nitespots near Kuta Beach. The JI terrorists and bomb-makers go by the noms de guerre of Umar Patek and Dulmatin, and nabbing them or killing them are a priority. The two rascals reputably have bounties of millions of dollars on their heads. If our armed forces bag these bozos and seize Janjalani, or dispatch all of them to Islamic Paradise, this would go far in establishing La Gloria’s anti-terrorist bona fides; (2) the passage of the long-overdue Anti-Terrorism Law, where the stumbling block remains the Senate. Alas, the GMA Administration can only describe many of our Senators as The Unfriendlies.

So what’s it to be? A mere pat on the back at Helsinki, or a warm invitation to a power lunch in Washington DC? That's entirely up to La Gloria and her merry men, and the state of their Report Card on the fight against global terrorism.

* * *

There are those who will immediately sneer "Mental Colony."

However, just consider what the United States did for Israel. Since that feisty but tiny country’s inception as a republic in 1948, with our friend the late David Ben-Gurion raising the Star of David banner and declaring independence, the US has gifted Israel in loans and aid no less than $100 billion. (I wrote this in a previous column, but after erroneous copyreading, the figure shrunk to an embarrassing $1 billion. So consider this an erratum).

Moreover, America grants Israel about $3 billion per year in aid, much of it military.

This is why the US cannot help being hated on the "Arab street." It is, unabashedly, the backer and sponsor of Israel, although not all Americans are circumcised. (Most Filipino males, by the way, are – this is a conundrum).

For all the brickbats being hurled against her and the slings and arrows of the outraged opposition, GMA is one lucky gal. The country is fiscally sound, although we’re now being buffeted by the storm winds of an escalating global oil crisis. The World Bank, long critical of the Philippines’ economy and financial institutions has shown regained confidence in us by recently programming $200 million in loans, with the promise that this will be doubled, or even further enhanced if we continue making a good showing.

The US has launched what is called The Millennium Challenge in which we stand to get $20 million IF we clean up our act and bring integrity and efficiency back into our corrupt system. This can be expected to soar to as much as $200 million if the GMA government behaves itself and demonstrates substantial progress.

Sanamagan. If we miss these proffered opportunities, then we deserve to remain in the dumps, with tons of garbage being dumped daily on our heads.

GMA likes to say that God is with her and invoke the help of Divine Providence. But this is the time, as the ditty went in wartime, to "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."

* * *

I had a long lunch with our Foreign Affairs Secretary Bert Romulo yesterday. He told me that the Philippines’ official position is to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and the "cessation of hostilities to spare from further harm the innocent and non-combatants in the region."

This of course, brother Bert, will not happen. The US, despite the opprobrium heaped on it by the Arabs, even their moderate friends in the Middle East, is hanging tough on the issue of a realistic "ceasefire" formula, meaning that first the Hezbollah must be disarmed and its 12,000 or more Katusha rockets and other longer-range missiles like the Khaibar-1 seized and decommissioned. The Hezbollah, which rained 180 missiles on Nor-thern Israel, and one long-range missile which exploded as far south as the Left Bank, last Wednesday, will never give up. Nor, unless the Hezbollah is neutralized and rendered impotent will the Israelis – pushing into Lebanon on the ground on five fronts – halt their offensive. Why give up now, is the mood in Jerusalem, when after a "ceasefire" the Hezbollah will only bestir itself and start launching missiles again?

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, after more than three weeks of non-stop air strikes, naval blockade, and now ground offensive, piously declares that the Israeli Defense Forces are willing to stop, IF at least a 15,000-strong international fighting force is deployed in South Lebanon to protect Israeli’s border from the intrusions and attacks of the Hezbollah.

Olmert underscored that the IDF will not loosen its grip on Southern Lebanon until such a United Nations or international armed force is already in place. The Israeli leader knows this won’t happen for many weeks – what am I saying? Not for many months.

He knows that the Europeans have been loudly condemning Israel and calling for such an international force to be mobilized and dispatched to "save" Lebanon, but nobody – not even frontrunner France – may be willing to send its own troops to enforce a ceasefire. The US and Britain, heavily committed in Afghanistan and Iraq, have already declared: "No, not us." The Germans won’t play either – they say their presence might remind the Israelis of their Nazi past when Adolf Hitler exterminated six million Jews in his concentration camps. No, sirs, they indicate: no entanglement for us in Lebanon.

So who’ll flesh out the 15,000 men then? Most Western European countries are mindful, for that matter, of the millions of Muslim immigrants or citizens who live in their midst. If they get mired in Lebanon, or are accused of being too kind to Israel, their Muslims may riot in their own streets. Remember the recent riots in Paris and other cities. Or the Islamic militants in Holland. The Germans, for that matter, have more Muslims (albeit mostly Turks) in Kreuzberg, in Berlin alone, than there are in Ankara, the capital of Turkey.

Who’ll join the multi-national "force"? Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt or Malaysia? The discussion will rage, but how many will put their own soldiers in harm’s way, or finance such an expensive rescue operation?

Olmert was scornful of the UNIFIL – the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon – which had arrived there in 1978 to "monitor" and enforce the evacuation by Israel of the disputed areas they controlled in South Lebanon and keep the Hezbollah at bay. The UNIFIL accomplished neither. It was more like a Boy Scout operation – with aging Boy Scouts, practically pensioners, "enjoying," as the Israelis scoffed a sort of vacation in Lebanon.

Indeed, when a wayward Israeli bomb from an air-strike killed four UN observers in their well-defined outpost in Southern Lebanon, the incident aroused the anger of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. We all mourn, alas, the death of those four UN monitors, but what has the UN got to do in a war zone with unarmed observers and monitors? What help could they give panicked and fleeing civilians, or with what "force," not even moral suasion, could they curb either Israeli or Hezbollah excesses? Instead of pulling those 2,000 blue helmets out of there because they have become "sitting ducks," the UN extended their stay (when it expired last week) by another year!

Now a fighting force "with teeth" and the mandate to shoot? Shoot whom? The Israelis or the Hezbollah, or both? Both have the propensity to shoot back.

In any event, the IDF is on a rampage, and its generals know they have more time than they expected to prosecute their mission to eradicate the well-armed and motivated Hezbollah. But can they accomplished this? The IDF, in the past, proved itself almost invincible in crushing attacking conventional Arab armies. Against a canny guerrilla enemy, which uses sophisticated weaponry and launches rockets from fast-changing sites, the IDF may have met more than its match.

* * *

The President has just ordered the immediate evacuation of all Filipinos in Lebanon. With our 30,000 OFWs still there, this is a tall order.

Secretary Romulo assured me yesterday that the evacuation and rescue of Filipinos in that endangered country is being stepped up, given the terrible fact that the main highways and bridges to the Syrian border and Damascus, where aircraft can speed the homecoming Filipinos on their way, have been cratered and blown up by the IDF air force.

He said that Ambassador Roy Cimatu (former armed forces chief of staff) and Ambassador Eric Andaya (our envoy to Kuwait and former Charge d’affaires in Iraq) are in Beirut coordinating the retrieval operations. Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis – another expert on the Middle East, having served as our Ambassador to several countries there – is in Damascus, Syria, to coordinate from that end.

Romulo said that when the batch of 900 Filipinos now being taken out of Lebanon via the long-way-around, via Aleppo, arrive here in the next few days, "we will have evacuated at least 3,500 of our countrymen."

The evacuation effort will continue apace, he underscored, but many OFWs don’t seem eager to leave Lebanon because many are employed in the less-imperilled sections of Beirut.

"We can’t put handcuffs on them, and drag them away," he smiled.

"But those who signify they want to leave will be brought out," he pledged.

Romulo says the DFA has been in touch with the International Organization of Migrants (not to be confused, I might add, with that kind of radical group Migrante) and that organization has placed three Boeing 747s at the Philippines’ disposal to ferry OFWs from Damascus to Manila.

In sum, Bert stressed, nobody who wishes to leave will be left behind.