Not bad to be war hawk!

I am not a war hawk in the way this term is taken and understood in international diplomacy. Truly, I am averse to war because while I was not born yet when the first and the second world wars were fought, I have read of how damaged mankind was from the brutalities of those conflicts as they are recorded in the bloodied pages of history. The estimated total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I, was around 40 million. As it involved more countries--28--and cost more money--$186 billion in direct costs and another $151 billion in indirect costs--than any previous war in history, the effects were unimaginable.

World War II, which brought death to an estimated 75 million people to include about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians, many of whom died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation, was far worse. Even if the Britannica reported no real statistical measurement of the material cost of World War II, it estimated the money cost to governments at more than $1,000,000,000,000. Whew! I do not know how to read this amount of money, so let me just say it as One quadrillion dollars. Correct?

These figures alone and not counting the costs of the French and American wars in Vietnam, the Six-day and the Yum Kippur wars, the Russian involvement in Afghanistan, the Desert Storm and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian as well as the Israel-Hamas war, make me opine, as an ordinary civilian, against any declaration of war by a country contra another state. In a manner of speaking, I am a “dove”, no matter the insignificance of this thinking.

I must admit though to be influenced by the so-called “western propaganda.” For instance, there was a recent publication that reported in noticeably laconic phraseology of the preparations being done by Japan termed “anti-China invasion.” There is a group of uninhabited islands known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, the Diaoyu Islands in the People's Republic of China (Communist China) and Tiaoyutai Islands in the Republic of China (Taiwan) which the communist Chinese hierarchy has repeatedly announced that they will take these islands. Japanese military minds think that these islands are the kegs of inevitable war. A face book post showed military drills conducted by the Japanese to make them ready in case China invades Taiwan and Japan.

The Philippine situation is far worse. The Chinese, while just making belligerent statements of taking back the Senkaku and Tiaoyutai Islands, has actually invaded and forcibly occupied some islands/islets in the West Philippine Sea in the face of a ruling of the International Arbitral Tribunal declaring these territories to be part of the Exclusive Economic Zone of our county. In other words, Communist China, as it yet only saber-rattles against Japan and Taiwan has brought upon us a kind of “undeclared war”.

We are a small country, no doubt, and economically poor compared to Japan and Taiwan, as well, but the dignity of our territorial sovereignty is not inferior to Japan and Taiwan’s own. The Philippines and we, Filipinos are left with no option but to prepare for war. I wish that our leaders’ war dove mentality, notwithstanding, they must do everything like war hawks.