The die is cast
Last Monday morning, I was jolted out of my bed by an early telecast blaring the presidential announcement of an offensive in Basilan province. As the news developed, there was supposed to be a relentless military operation ordered by no less than Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the
To me, the news was late in coming, far too late than I would have really wanted to hear. I could remember having immediately felt the savagery to which our men in uniform were subjected shortly after they were ambushed by a reportedly bigger force. I thought such senseless assault on the dignity of the human body had to be punished with equal immediacy.
That Monday morning, General Hermogenes Esperon, whose name was prominently mentioned in the "Hello Garci" tapes not very long ago, swiftly echoed the pronouncement of Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. While I had reservations on the sincerity of his words, owing to his unresolved alleged fraudulent participation in the 2004 electoral capers (forgive me for this bias), I secretly clapped my hands and wished him, and more importantly, our soldiers, the best of luck. The die being cast, it was time to deal with such criminals with iron-fisted policies and the general's heading it with resolve and dedication would allow him to recover some lost credibility ground.
In all candidness, I am not a bloodhound crying for the slaughter of those responsible for the cruel and inhuman beheading of our soldiers. But, I cannot, in conscience, allow the blood of our slain soldiers to dry any day further without their murderers meted the harshest and most severe retribution. Also, I can hardly tolerate the obvious slow pace of our military men whose gaits seem to swing without urgency.
Neither am I a war monger advocating the conduct of full scale military action to put an end to his ugly chapter of our history. But, in my view, amateurish though it may be, the government has dilly-dallied a lot more than necessary. Our leaders had not demonstrated the needed decisiveness in solving this itch. We are treating the Abu Sayyaf (and their confederates among some secessionists groups) with kid gloves. We have had a heavy dose of NATO to mean No Action, Talk Only. Our collective memory recalls those countless similar proclamations made by past regimes without correlative actions.
So, I welcomed, last Monday, the presidential fiat and the marching orders apparently given to our men in the field. Indeed, the die is hopefully firmly cast. Certainly, I, like most of the people, do not have any idea how to wage war. We do not know how our military geniuses carry out such maneuvers as will pulverize the Abu Sayyaf group and their ilk. However it must be conducted, this war must not be stopped until the last denizen has fallen.
We have babied, far too long, these criminals at the huge cost to our economy. All these past many year, we have nurtured the hope that we can co-exist with them and better still live in harmony and peace with them for which apparent reason, we have withheld the kind of expenditure as would have been necessary to annihilate them in a costly firefight. All the peace initiatives resorted to by our leaders and approved by our people have been taken advantaged of and consequently, all our hopes that lived with them have obviously failed.
It is time we put our resources to quash this problem in the shortest possible period. Puslan man! I believed without any iota of doubt that when we succeed, finally, to write finish to the Abu Sayyaf group, and their cohorts, first, we shall no longer have any distraction in our economic efforts, and second, we shall honor those Filipino soldiers who were recent victims of savagery.
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