Yo, Jester!
Written on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 11:40 pm | by RomYo, Jester! Whatever gave you the idea that I was a peacenik? LOL!
My weapon of choice, mister.
Or in case he’s unavailable …
LOL!
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right, right. LOL
I surrender! Take me captive now but please be gentle.
‘Peace’ is becoming a dirty word, at least in the FV collective.
cvj,
I think peace-making is like brain surgery. It must be done right, or else it will inexorably lead to war. Thus, peace-making based on wishful thinking or unjust premises, may be compared to psychic surgery, a fervent, self-righteous occupation that is also a dirty word.
DJB, if you’re making that ‘brain surgery’ as an analogy, then you might as well also say that war-making is like brain surgery, it must be done right or else it will lead to more war. Now as for war-making, what is the chance that it will be done right if people cannot even make a distinction between the MILF and the rest of Bangsamoro?
It’s a pity that even in a supposed to be enlightened forum such as FV, no one really believes in the power of non-violence.
What sickens me is that when the eventual news of atrocities against Muslim non-combatants reaches us, those who advocate war will be the same ones who will make an excuse that such tragedies are a fact of life in war (to which i can only think to myself, then why did you endorse the war in the first place?)
i am close to biting off swear words.
i want peace; i don’t want war. in war, even innocents get hurt.
that said, cvj, the position i support is simple, and is actual practice — at least among the boots i know in the south: a) protect the population, and b) take out the terrorists.
you think atrocities don’t sicken me and others? tell that to the boots who fell at tipo-tipo. tell that to the noncombatants who flee because their families are cut down by such as ombra kato.
if the terrorists don’t want to go DDR, then there’s little choice but to go to war… unless we want another thirty-odd years of “unpeace”.
peace is the goal. if war must be the means, well, the terrorists have declared so first… and as juned has pointed out, if the state cannot protect or is enjoined not to protect its people, what options are left to these people?
Jester, in conducting the war, how do we distinguish between the MILF (aka the ‘bad guys’) and the Bangsamoro people (aka the ‘innocents’)? As we have seen, even here in FV, the two are being confused (e.g. witness Jon accusing Grace of being an MILF-sympathizer and DJB demonizing the Sultanates whenever he gets the chance) and if such confusion exists especially given the fog of war, then collateral damage will happen resulting in further alienation which will in turn prolong the war. If we do not have any action plan on this area, then we are just paying lip service to peace. I have some proposals in this area but it will involve entering into another Austero’s bargain.
cvj,
It’s unfair to accuse people of not wanting peace. It’s really an ad hominem argument that is beneath your normally circumspect and reasonable demeanor.
As for demonizing the Sultanates, they deserve demonizing because there is a noticeable tendency to paint them as if they were these great Arab civilizations that were peaceful kingdoms of love and comity. But to expose their true nature is not to denigrate what they had achieved: conquest of the Southern Philippines, with no more and no less claim to legitimacy than Spain or America. If Spain had never come, we might be Muslims now. But that is not what happened. Spain did come and we are now Westerners for all intents and purposes.
Sorry but that is how the cookie crumbled. What I am rebelling against now, intellectually, is this “historical restorative justice” snake oil coming out of USIP and other “peace NGOs.”
Seeing that MOA-AD, isn’t it obvious there would’ve been war whether it was signed or not? the MOA is DOA, from the point of view of piecemaking.
And no, war making is not like peace making. The MILF and the NPA do it all the time. It’s easy. You just pull the triggers on the remote control landmines or set off Ombra Kato. That’s not brain surgery, but the lack of it.
DJB, two wrongs don’t make a right so demonizing the Sultanates does not correct the opposite portrayal of the same. In any case, whatever your reasons for writing about them today, it is clear that they serve to fan hatred of Muslim civilization in general and similar resentment from the Muslims at an inopportune time. Now, if we want to contain the scope of the war to the likes of Kato and Bravo (or the MILF), and not let it spread and escalate into a generalized Muslim vs. Christian conflict, then your kind of discourse should be banned from public discussion for the duration of the conflict. Now that we are at war, we have to employ the logic behind Singapore’s OB markers.
With reference to what i said above (at 3:16pm)…
…it didn’t even take 2 hours.
cvj,
well “demonizing” was your word. All I’ve been doing is reading history, which I think DOES combat the angelizing by neo-sultanists, at least on the point that you know I’ve been stressing: that Islam has no greater claim to being indigenous than Christianity because BOTH the Christians and Muslims are or were indios (my definition). Both were conquering, colonizing forces.
I will be happy if this substantive point you will acknowledge to be true. It’s nothing to do with my attitude to war or peace.
Who said I endorse a “war”? To me it’s a police action to arrest, prosecute and punish the rampagers and pillagers who broke the Law.
It’s only the MILF that wants “war” since they can’t have their ransom payment for holding us at gunpoint all this time.
DJB, please don’t be naive. I think you’re smart enough to realize the implications of your mere ‘reading history’ to a volatile situation. If it is true that all you want to do is to pursue a…
…then you shouldn’t mix it up with your Clash of Civilizations rhetoric. Sharif Kabunsuan is not Bravo or Kato.
There IS, unfortunately a clash of civilizations here. It is not true that we can accomodate everything about Islam, simply because Democracy also has non-negotiable principles that are contradicted by Islam (and every other religion!)
The distinction has been made. Freedom of religion has two parts: the freedom to believe and the freedom to act. The former is basically unrestricted, but clearly the latter is strictly delimited by other people’s rights. And that is why only the AFP can legitimately carry guns around, so it can enforce everyone’s legitimate rights.
Do you believe this or not?
i concur with djb. peace is almost not possible with an enemy who is convinced that the only good good christian is a dead christian, and who would “piously” blow himself up if he could kill a hundred or more “infidels” in the process. nothing could be more dangerous than a people believing they are taking “orders” from their deity in eliminating “non-believers”.
DJB (at 5:28 am), just as i suspected. Your “police action to arrest, prosecute and punish the rampagers and pillagers who broke the Law” is actually part of your violent solution to your so-called Clash of Civilizations. That’s how escalation happens. That’s how Jester’s terms morphs into the Neocon’s Long War. Of course, at this stage, you’re careful not to use that word.
cvj,
So, you are sponsoring for the disarmament of the Philippine government, and allowing the sellout of the Bangsamoro territories to terrorists, yes?
If not, WHAT is YOUR solution?
Jon, i posted my proposed ’solution’ in my blog. (The immediate solution is in the main entry while the long term solution is in the comments section.) The important thing is to prosecute war in such a manner that would minimize the risk of escalation. Escalation can happen via mistaken identity (e.g. your identifying Grace as an ‘MILF-sympathizer’) or by being dragged into someone else’s war (e.g. DJB’s Clash of Civilizations).
To prevent mistaken identity, the decision on whom to kill (or not to kill) should be left to someone with a nuanced understanding of the area like Grace, not you, not me, especially not DJB.
To prevent being dragged into a Bosnia-type (or Rwanda-type) war between people’s, inflammatory rhetoric such as DJB’s should be banned for the duration of the conflict.
If you read from Manolo’s Inquirer column last Thursday…
…so going to war for the sake of ‘DDR’ would be to repeat the mistake of the Americans..
oh, boy. my temper’s rising. i will make a post on this soon.
but to demolish this rather ingenuous argument:
has not the distinction been clear from the get-go? have not the bangsamoro people rejected via three plebiscites the start of a means to secede from the republic?
i want peace. i don’t want friends and family down in the south having to flee the conflict — a conflict that was not started by the republic, do note. i understand grace’s post, but my problem with it is the blame foisted on the soldiers.
the boots do not go into villages and raze them. the boots get in the way of these terrorists who do — burn cellsites, raze farms, kill government supporters.
to blame the boots for the fighting is simply another form of stockholm syndrome, in a hostage-taking writ large.
and if a hostage-taker won’t put down his arms and surrender peacefully, the option of a 7.62 mm headshot is of merit… entebbe writ large.
since the decades-long “hostage negotiations” have not borne fruit due to the terrorists’ refusal to deal with the republic in good faith, and with mindanao (and bicol, and negros, and other places) being bled white by terrorist bands, there is precious little left in the way of options.
DDR. or DIE.
Jester, don’t you see that Jon has already made such a mistake in the case of Grace by identifying her as an MILF-sympathizer? If we can make such mistakes from the relative comfort of our computers, what more those in the field in the heat of battle? Also, don’t you notice that DJB’s idea of ‘police action’ is to drag us into his Clash of Civilizations crusade? There is a reason why the Americans call it ‘the Long war’. With these, i don’t agree that distinguishing between the MILF and the rest of Bangsamoro is a non-issue.
cvj,
To deny that there is an irresolvable contradiction between political Islam (which calls for the establishment of fundamentalist theocracy based on sacred inequality between Muslims and the kufar) and liberal Democracy, is to advocate blindness.
Democracy is the future, the most successful reformation. Radical Islam is a Counter Reformation that cannot seem to accept that the Ottoman Empire is history and that there is simply no one true religion.
To me individual liberty, regardless of sex, creed or ethnicity, is nonnegotiable. If you want to denigrate this as some kind of American invention or Western vs Eastern Clash of Civilizations, you are free to do so.
To me it’s seeing what is Right and what is Wrong.
I have no umbrage to bear against Muslims per se. But I also do not confuse the Bangsamoro people with the MILF’s rampaging thuggees as some do.
The argument that we cannot tell the difference (especially when they are using civilians as human shields) and therefore we ought not to arrest the criminal pillagers and arsonists and murderers is breathtaking for its sheer illogicality. Guerilla warfare makes it harder to enforce the law on them, but surely that does not rescue the MILF from moral depravity.
DJB, your approach of conflating the atrocities of Kato and Bravo with your need to win in the larger Clash of Civilizations is precisely what would result in the escalation of this war (or ‘police action’). It’s that old ‘looking for WMD’ to ‘democratizing the Middle East’ bait and switch that happened in Iraq, except in our case, we don’t have the money to burn.
Yes, political Islam is an idea that competes with Liberal Democracy, but you do not defeat an idea with violence. You defeat it with a superior idea.
To whom exactly are you addressing the above? If it’s to me, then i would have to tell you that you’ve once again reformulated my position into a strawman version.
CVJ,
I make no bones about my support for a democratic civilization for all of humanity.
What, pray tell, does political Islam offer in competition to our democratic principles that you would support?
My mistake with regards to Grace does not validate the actions of the MILF, chuck.
I trust you to be intelligent enough to realize that.
None, but again that does not address my point that we have to defeat political Islam as an idea by offering better ideas, not through violence. How can you demonstrate the superiority of liberal democracy if death and destruction is inflicted in its name?
Jon, no it does not excuse the MILF, but it shows how easy it is to mistake someone as the ‘bad guy’ which is the point i’m making with Jester.
CVJ,
What do you think the Constitution is? Chicken liver? That’s the Idea that I support. How about you?
I don’t think our use of violence is OUR choice. It is enforced on us by the METHODS chosen by the MILF for achieving ideas that, AT LAST, (as I suspected), you don’t support either!
So what is your position reduced to? That we ought to be creative in our defense against murderers, arsonists and beheaders?
When Justice Puno calls for an end to fighting, is he not in effect telling the Military not to enforce the Law. They are tryign to arrest criminals, aren’t they?
Honestly, you are sitting on a melting ice floe, man.
DJB, whether or not to use violence is always a choice. If violence is indeed unavoidable, then lets at least limit it to the immediate perpetrators (e.g. Kato and Bravo). Let’s not use their atrocities as a pretext to instigate a war between peoples. Taking on Political Islam militarily would be a case of Mission Creep which would yield negative returns.
there will be no war between peoples, cvj, or at least with the terms i had proposed.
there will only be a war between the republic and terrorists.
the bangsamoro who have quite obviously already rejected the MILF for several times now are no less filipino than the ilocanos, the tagalogs and whatever else have you. in time, the word bangsamoro will be spoken in the same way as we speak the word tagalog.
if one is to use the inane argument that the MILF represent the bangsamoro people and that the bangsamoro are not filipino, how can they do this in light of the outright REJECTION of these people of the MILF?
the bangsamoros and the filipinos are not two separate peoples. my terms of DDR or DIE applies to the terrorists, not to some postulated “other nation”.
Jester, once the fighting starts, how can you ensure that it will carry on within the terms you proposed? You admitted that you are ‘not a hawk’ so how can you be sure that once you accede to war, the hawks will not find a way to prolong it? Already, one of our fellow FV bloggers is pushing to take it to the next level, i.e. from a ‘police action’ to a Clash of Civilizations. There are those who would benefit from perpetuating a state of war and they’re not the people you would like to help.
if you are referring to the NPA and the MILF, you’d be right. they are the true hawks.
cvj,
you must read too much of the philippine daily innuendo, or something. There really is no “all-out war” going on. It’s mostly media hype, even if what IS happening is terrible. I don’t think the AFP or even the govt can possibly be accused of “instigating a war between peoples.” That only aggrandizes and ahem, conflates the MILF with the Muslim Filipinos. I daresay that the majority of Muslims do consider themselves to be Filipinos and not MILF ulipuns (alipins), even if they know they are minorities. I also believe they think they are better off here than in any other Muslim country (otherwise we ought to be seeing a major outflux).
The MILF is NOT the same as the Moros. The AFP knows this, and I think it is a very different force now than under Marcos. Not exactly what I would want, but Gen. Yano at least strikes me as more professional than Esperon.
Regarding Kato and other rogue commanders, why is the MILF not taking care of them? I do not for one minute believe that they could not be controlled by the MILF if the MILF really wanted to. It’s a shell game where Dr. Jekyll blames Mr. Hyde.
All the more reason to decouple the MILF from the Moro people who have other leaders and other options.
So, from the start, GRP has not been talking to the right entity?
Wrong paradigm, ab initio.
Are you saying that the government, after consulting local politicians, scholars, ulamas, and other relevant personalities, had not uncovered this: MILF does not represent the Bangsa Moro, not even an iota.
And that, even the sophisticated Americans, in particular the United States’ Institute of Peace were hoodwinked?
philman,
The MILF has held the country hostage at gunpoint for decades, even after the MNLF signed a Final Peace Agreement. Of course the government has to deal with it, one way or another. But the USIP did the hood winking. It was they who aggrandized the concept of autonomy and ancestral domain into Bangsamorostan. Besides how many plebiscites among the Muslims have already rejected their sultanic verses?
djb,
For the love of me, I cannot believe that the US Institute of Peace and the GRP took the Senior Consultant Astrid Tuminez’ words, hook, line and sinker.
I googled the credentials of Ms. Tuminez. Well, she might/could have been a good management consultant (process, operations review, etc.) but definitely she lacked historical context.
It wasn’t the USIP that hoodwinked GRP. It was little Astrid’s handiwork. OMG!
philman,
say, is there an echo in here or somethin’?
what i think is necessary in rebel-infested mindanao is a “surge” in the government forces to say, at least 50,000 pnp law enforcers. we should take a look at what happened in iraq where the surge had practically decimated the al quaeda terrorists and drastically reduced the killing of civilians. an irresistible force is needed to end the menace once and for all. the “negotiation” charade must stop.
cvj’s “escalation” mantra is a figment of the imagination. the cause of the rebels cannot win the heart and mind of the filipino people just as the npa’s never did.
From our own recent history, what led to the escalation of the rebellions in Mindanao during Marcos’ time was militarization.
cvj, what do you think would a “negotiation” with uncompromising separatist rebels (with jihadist mindset) accomplish? yeah, maybe a temporary lull in the fighting until the next ‘impossible demand’ is made by the outlaws.
what guaranty is there that this group (represented by “leaders” of questionable authority) would honor any “peace agreement”?
aguinaldo’s katipunan was ended by an irresistible force of the americans with the massacre at tirad pass that killed gen. gregorio del pilar. the irresistible union force vanquished the resolute confederates in the american revolution, thereby preserving the union. the us-philippine troops in bataan and corregidor where overwhelmed by an irresistible force of japan. a good part of europe was overrun by hitler’s iresistible blitzkrieg. a “token” force of the government cannot cut the mustard in mindanao, and is a sure-fire way of perpetuating grace’s “the magic hour”.
Bencard, i was responding to your remark that escalation is a ‘figment of [my] imagination’ which is not the case. It was the militarization in Mindanao (during Marcos’ time) that caused the rebellions to escalate. When you think about it, that’s not difficult to understand because acts of violence tend to cause collateral damage and economic hardship among the civilian population which further alienates them from government so the mass base of the rebels grows. So you start of with the intention of targetting ’separatist rebels with a jihadist mindset’ but you end up hurting more, especially the innocent. And then as i mentioned above (at September 14th, 2008 3:16 pm), the hawks excuse this by saying that this is in the nature of war.