Saturday, August 25, 2007

We Are All Sitting Ducks Now


Click to enlarge
Manila is on "Full Red Alert" as authorities announced the possibility of a "spill-over effect" from the ongoing operations in Basilan and Sulu.

"Full Red Alert" means women entering shopping malls and mass transit systems will get chopsticks poked into their handbags and men get politely felt up their backsides by embarrassed security guards. (Embarrassed becaue they know how futile and porous their procedures really are.)

Of course it is a real joke at sea ports and boarding areas for the country's thousands of inter-island vessels and maritime transport hubs, bus stations and bustling public markets, where of course, we have had a series of terrorist attacks over the years. For example, Rizal Day 2000 Bombing of the Manila LRT by JI--32 dead; the Super Ferry 14 bombing in 2004 by ASG/RSM--126 dead; and the dozens of bombings at ports, bus depots, markets, bars, and just the other day, Pershing Plaza in Zamboanga City, 14 injured, to remind everyone how conscious of History these particular terrorists are.

Please notice that none of these terrorist-induced civilian deaths and injuries should be called "collateral damage" because although a terrorist attack is generally indiscriminate the damage is always "intentional."

Intentional also was the ambuscade and killing of fourteen Philippine Marines searching for kidnapped Italian priest, Giancarlo Bossi, near Tipo-tipo, Basilan on July 10, 2007 by members and friends of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which owned up to and never has denied it carried out the deadly attack. On its website, the MILF even claimed the real number of soldiers they killed was 23 and not just 14, but the rebel group also listed accurately the arms, weapons and ammunition they took from the soldiers. The MILF denied in its post having anything to do with the subsequent torture and beheading of ten of the 14 Marines, claiming it did not know their identities but reporting one of the "field commanders" as reporting the "deep hatred" in the eyes of the beheaders as they hacked off human heads, fingers and sexual organs to get at necklaces, wedding rings and cell phones, which they then used to send taunting text to grieving wives and children of the dead Marines.

Speaking of taunting text to grieving wives and children of dead Marines, check out the kind of headlines that the Philippine Daily Innuendo and other "peace advocates" have been "texting" by the hundreds of thousands during the last few weeks (and the answer of the Marines!)

Since July 10, over fifty Philippines soldiers have been killed in action against MILF forces in Basilan, MNLF forces in Sulu, and now ASG forces in Basilan again.

In a shameless editorial this week and in big bold headlines, PDI called the slain soldiers' sacrifice a case of "WASTED LIVES." although of course they put these very words in the mouths and hide behind the skirts of "Church and political leaders, civic and women’s groups" to take such cheap potshots.

The editorial is actually a model for all young leftist propagandists in training because of the sophisticated manner of delivering the worst possible messages about the military and the government to the detriment of the troops, whilst actually sounding Concerned with a Capital C. For example to make the downright nasty suggestion that young soldiers are being sent to their deaths on "test missions" the editorial craftily quotes an officer who speaks only on condition of anonymity.

But listen to the interview of Pia Hontiveros with Senator Rodolfo Biazon, Chairman of the Senate Defense Committee and Marine Commandant Nelson Allaga about much of the drivel 'n snivel in the editorial. They spoke at Marine HQ last Monday where 13 of 15 Marines slain in capturing an ASG encampment during a fierce gunbattle that saw 42 ASG killed.



Sen. Biazon makes the forceful point that backing down as the "peace advocates" demand would mean surrendering to the terrorists and reneging on our solemn duty to uphold the law, bring to justice murderers and beheaders, and to secure Philippine sovereignty against what may be more than local rebels altogether.



Allaga addresses the issue of "young soldiers" in battle, among many other aspects of the ongoing law enforcement operations to serve those 130 arrest warrants.


Above, the sister, wife, father and girlfriend of some of the "wasted lives" prove the simple nobility of simple folks as compared to those fancy editors at their desks of inhuman disdain.

Ellen Tordesillas has a piece on the relief of the Basilan ground commander
, Col. Romero Alivio, in which the significant and tantalizing substance is Alivio After Battle Report, which confirms the earlier suggestion that combat air support for the ambushed Marines was ordered to stand down (probably by the Peace Negotiators, Dureza and Gen. Garcia) because they were engaging "friendly forces", their partners in the peace process, the MILF.

Three weeks after the Tipo-tipo ambuscade by the MILF, Basilan Regional Trial Court Judge Leo Principe issued arrest warrants for some 130 suspects, almost all of them known MILF members and the soldati of local warlords and politicians, based on evidence and testimony gathered from locals and witnesses and his finding of probable cause.

Just as police were going to serve those arrest warrants however, here come Jess Dureza (Presidential Adviser to the Peace Process) and Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, Chief Peace Negotiator. They SET ASIDE, on the President's say so, the serving of the arrest warrants, and spend a whole week whitewashing and exonerating the MILF in public, and then blaming the whole Tipo-tipo incident on "lawless elements" of the Abu Sayyaf Group. They were clearly trying to save the MILF so that the peace deal they are cooking up, in which a Muslim Juridical Entity will be setup as a new homeland for JI and Al Qaed--err, the Bangsamoro People.

Thus when the President declared "all-out war" last week, it was "all-out war" against the Abu Sayyaf bandit group. In their "Independent Fact Finding committee report" which has not been released to the public, Dureza, Garcia and MILF's Iqbal determine that four Abu Sayyaf bandits did the beheadings while six looked on.

There is no "all out war" on either MILF or the MNLF, even though they admitted killing those fourteen Marines in Basilan and 10 more in Maimbung, Sulu, respectively.

I guess this really means we are all sitting ducks now because the MILF's Iqbal was right, when he commented recently in Malaysia after Peace Talks were postponed, that the Philippine Government lacks "coordination," smiling mysteriously and smugly.

I took that to mean that the MILF does not suffer from such a lack of "coordination" with its own Base and that they are playing everyone like a fiddle: the Government, the Media, the Military. The terrorists have almost everybody convinced that it is OUR fault there is WAR.

But I think the peace process is dead, because the Moro cause has already been hijacked by the Global Jihad, and there most certainly is not negotiation with that. This hypothesis will be tested in the level of violence and terrorist attacks in the next few months. I hope it is wrong, but signs are already pointing the other way, as in that fundraising video deployed by the ASG on YouTube and broadcast all over the Muslim World.

I wonder what Mssrs. Dulmatin, Umar Patek and Zulkifli Abdhir are doing at this very moment?

13 comments:

manuelbuencamino said...

Beating the war drums again.

Drop the drumsticks and pick up a gun fer crissakes. Our gallant soldiers are being ambushed left and right and all you can do is egg them on.

C'mon DJ. Fight, don't talk, for what you espouse.

Or is saber rattling really the chickenhawk neoconservative way of doing things?

Deany Bocobo said...

MB,
This is an ad hominem argument. It's beneath you MB. But I guess when you run out of ideas and arguments against reality, you have to retreat to jingoism.

That's the way of most Liberals: moral and intellectual copouts!

Deany Bocobo said...

C'mon MB. Use your noodle and give us some kind of decent argument.

You don't think there isn't something funny about the all out war on the Abu Sayyaf when it was MILF that KILLED the 14 marines and only later both the Govt and MILF blamed the ASG for the beheadings?

As for the MNLF, they killed over 20 in Sulu, 10 of them their own recruits who had joined the folds of the Law and joined the Army, ferchrissakes! They were going to market to buy their breakfast when they were ambushed and killed by the MNLF.

Note: peace talks appear useless and deadly even AFTER we have signed them!

You and your talk of war and peace ignore the simple fact, that we are still a democracy ruled by law and order.

You folks just bring up the topic of war when the Law has to bring criminals to justice and they just happen to be the political forces you somehow agree with.

but analyze the other major Philippine commentary hypothesis:

We are no longer dealing with the old Moro rebellion because it has been captured by the Global Jihad ideologically. They are armed with OBL Thought MB.

manuelbuencamino said...

Call it ad hominem because it is. And ad hominem is the only argument against saber rattlers. When you ask people to shed blood for something you believe in, you must show you are willing to shed your blood as well. You have to walk the talk.

You can't be a Joma who calls for revolution from Utretch you have to be with your men. But at least Joma can identify the enemy. You can't, not unless you're a mind reader.


Can you identify the enemy? Do they wear unfiorms? where is their headquarters, their camps etc. You can only identify them from the thoughts they verbalize. Who are you going to bomb and shoot at? Anyone standing in front of you, anyone who is not behind you?

I think a little more discernment is required to wage a successful war against a faceless ideological enemy.

Even the MILF and MNLF, except for their self proclaimed leaders, are difficult to identify in the field because they have no uniforms or identifying tags. So how do you wage war if you don't and can't tell who your enemies are, by reading their minds?

If I airdrop you in the middle of a villahe in Sulu, Basilan or mainland Mindanao would you be able to tell who is MILF,MNLF or ASG? So how do know who to shoot at?

manuelbuencamino said...

Why is there no standing warrant for 100 plus individuals? The warrant of arrest for those 100 plus beheaders could not be served and had to returned because they were John Does? Or if they were not Johm Does, how was the PNP or AFP able to identify all of them so fast, did they know their names beforehand? did someone furnish them the names?

Let's get our facts straight and our enemy identified so we can have an intelligent argument.

We won;t get anywhere with your thesis of those who are not with us are against us. That doesn;t help in the real world where the soldier has to know whom to shoot at.

So before you rattle your saber, make sure you can identify in real terms who the enemy is without resorting to mind reading.

Deany Bocobo said...

Nego supositum!

You are the only one making the argument on this blog that we should wage all out war!

It is the only way, as I said, for you to ignore everything that has been written here, by claiming that what is written here is "all out war".

The Leftists and Liberals like you, have no analysis and no solution, because you don't believe terrorism exists. You don't even believe it can be defined MB.

And so when folks like me say we should do LAW ENFORCEMENT no matter what is going on with the PEACE TALKS, you insist that we are beating war drums.

Coz you would come to a war without ammo. just like when you come here, got nothing to say really, then start insulting me,
as if I caused these problems.

It is a variant of the "root causes" argument--that the only solution is the asymptotically distant one.

We should uphold the law and enforce it even if there are peace talks.

That is my position.

Can you even state what yours is?

manuelbuencamino said...

If it;s a LAW ENFORCEMENT issue then the PNP should be there?

Where is the PNP? Why is the AFP doing LAW ENFORCEMENT instead of the PNP?

If it's a matter of LAW ENFORCEMENT, why do you keep harping on their ideology.religion?

Lay out your ideology and your political agenda.

I asked you to identify the enemy abd you sidestepped my question. You chose to attack a strawman your favorite tactic. You even use a generic Leftists and Liberals. What are they, DJ?

Like I said, identify the enemy and you will not look like Joma making ideological attacks against strawmen.

Science and politics are the same in the sense that ideology always gets in the way of clear thinking.

And ideology is the lazy man's microscope,

Deany Bocobo said...

These bad guyz ambushed and killed heavily armed Marines. They even beheaded them. So you want to send policemen to get 130 of them?

Their ideology is NOT religion. Terrorism is an insult to Islam, or at least, the good in Islam.

Everything else you said proceeds from the wrong premise and is therefore ignorable.

Deany Bocobo said...

BTW, the law to be enforced here is the anti terrorism law.

The crime to be punished is terrorism.

And as far as I am concerned the killers of those marines are just as guilty, if not more than the beheader scavengers, since the latter would not have been possible without the former.

yet you blame ME for the war?

I suspect you have an inflated view of bloggers!

manuelbuencamino said...

still no answer to a very straightforward question.

tsk tsk

Deany Bocobo said...

MB,
This blog writes more in one day than you do in a whole year.
tsk tsk

becomeactive said...

I'm not going to join the meta-arguements about the arguements.

I just want to note that saying "the Moro cause has already been hijacked by the Global Jihad" indicates a very poor judgement.

1) There is no global Jidad. This is a myth made up by the neoconservatives in America to justify thei're 'global war-on-terror'.

2) It completely disregards the difference between 'islamic' and 'islamist' movements.

3) It starts from a vieuw on the Muslims in the world a beïng some kind of 'unity'. Well, there much less similarities between a Minanao Moro Muslim and and a christian from Manilla, then between the same Minanao Muslim and a Moroccean Muslim.

This vieuw is verry naïve and isn't helpfull in understanding the complex conflicts in the middle east or in the philippines.

It's just easy, and that's all you need to create hysteria.

Deany Bocobo said...

KOEN,
Bali bombers Umar Patek and Dulmatin, mass murderers of innocents, and Zulkifli Abdhir, Jemaah Islamiyah top leader, are in Mindanao.

I wonder what you think they might be doing there? Sightseeing?