Two news items

Jump to Comments

Meant to blog about a few news stories I found thre previous two weeks but work and lazing around over the three-day weekend (almost computer free!) got to me.

News item #1  Iraq is not the Philippines from the LA Times.

DOES HISTORY provide any models suggesting that the unhappy war in Iraq might have a happy ending? Journalists and military experts are pointing hopefully to the U.S. war in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century as an example of how Americans can fight a tough guerrilla insurgency and eventually win.

Max Boot, an Op-Ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has written that the U.S. victory in the Philippines provides a “useful reminder” that Americans can prevail in Iraq. Similar arguments have been made by Robert Kaplan in the Atlantic Monthly and by the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute.

Wow. Talk about *flattering* comparison. The Iraq issue is a big mess here in the US, since the country has already invested too much and far too many people have already been killed and nothing seems to be happening out of that decision to go to war.

And now they’re comparing it to the Philippines? Different place, different era, different context, baby. Here are pertinent points raised in the article:

First, it neglects the massive differences between the Philippines in 1900 and Iraq in 2006. The guerrillas in the Philippines fought the Army with old Spanish muskets and bolo knives; today’s insurgents in Iraq employ sophisticated improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades and heat-seeking shoulder-fired missiles that can shoot down helicopters. And combat in Iraq takes place in a fully urbanized society where “pacification” is much more difficult than in the mostly rural islands of the Philippines.

Also, the Filipinos who fought the U.S. Army at the turn of the 20th century had no outside allies or sources of support. Today’s Iraqi insurgents are at the center of a burgeoning anti-Americanism that has spread throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, with supporters in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

News Item #2

Which brings me to the next news item that I bookmarked, just because it was hilarious beyond words that our Secretary of Justice has this very narrow way of thinking, as evidenced by his thoughts on UP:

Gonzales says UP breeds destabilizers, naked runners

THIS time Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez has picked on the University of the Philippines school system, saying it mainly produces militant protesters and fraternity men and women who run around the campus naked.

“That school breeds the destabilizers that haunt the country year after year. They are acting as if they are the only ones who know how to run the country,” Gonzalez told the Inquirer yesterday.

He made it clear, however, that he was not assailing the entire university population because “there are many students there who are bright and good.”

Interviewed by phone while he was with President Macapagal-Arroyo in Guimaras, Gonzalez pointed to the Oblation run of the APO fraternity as another indication of the kind of students that came from UP.

“I doff my hat to them because they initiate the running of naked people… That’s also one kind of culture that they develop there,” he said, noting that women had begun to join the naked run as well which is held in December.

Sir, maybe it be best if you try to avoid the foot-in-mouth syndrome by just not saying anything? I mean, this wasn’t really necessary for you to say but you still did, and gave people a window to your thought process.

1 Comment

Filed under American Politics, Philippine Issues, Philippine Politics, Philippines, World Issues, World Politics