Visiting to Overstay: Penetration and Bondage
Immediately after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, the Philippines became the second battlefront in the “war on terrorism.” In February 2002, Arroyo allowed the U.S. Special Operations Command-Pacific to conduct “training exercises” in Mindanao. Earlier, 660 US soldiers arrived in the Philippines, expanding Washington’s “preventive” war to southeast Asia. The San Francisco Chronicle (18 Jan. 2002) editorialized on the “Next Battle: Philippines,” pointing out that the demonized ASG is so discrepant from Al Qaeda, and that poverty and land reform are the causes of conflict in the US neocolony. The first Balikatan war games were held involving 4,773 Filipino and U.S. troops. About 2000 US soldiers participated in counterinsurgency operations disguised as “civic action” in several provinces where the NPA was active: Pampanga, Zambales, Nueva Ecija, Cavite and Palawan. This intrusion of the US military was considered legal under the VFA ratified in 1998, just seven years after the Philippine Senate rejected the renewal of the 1947 RP-US Military Bases Agreement, thus closing the two huge US bases in Asia Clark and Subic) where the US enjoyed extraterritorial rights and inflicted all kinds of abuses and indignities on Filipinos (see Teodoro Agoncillo and Milagros Guerrero, History of the Filipino People, 1970). In June 2002, at least 1,200 military personnel comprised the largest US mission outside Afghanistan (Bobby Tuazon, Unmasking the War on Terror, 2002).
The VFA signifies the legitimized sell-out of Philippine sovereignty. Under the VFA, the US can enter the Philippines anywhere and hold military operations. It restricts the Philippine government in checking US aircrafts and ships for nuclear weapons banned by the Constitution. US authorities have jurisdiction over their servicemen who commit crimes in the Philippines while on duty. The flagrant example is the case of Marine Corporal Daniel Smith, convicted for rape last Dec. 4, 2006. Even before his appeal could be acted upon, the Arroyo government surrendered Smith to the custody of the US Embassy, placing him beyond the jurisdiction of local authorities. In October 2007, US officials promised that rape will no longer be committed during war games. Col. Ben Matthews II, commander of the Marine Aircraft Group and co-director of the Talon Vision ’08 exercise (in which Smith and his three co-accused officers were involved), spoke about “the ethics and morality of individuals, not just soldiers” (Tonette Orejas, “US Marines promise no more rape,” Inquirer 10/21/2009). Meanwhile, the whereabouts of Smith has become a matter of public speculation, or “rumor-mongering” (to use the Marcos dictatorship’s neologism) as the Supreme Court investigates the legality of his transfer.
Aside from the VFA, US troops, attached employees, and their war materiel have been given unlimited and unrestricted freedom of movement, flexibility and maneuver by the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MlSA, 2003; renewed 2008), and the Security Engagement Board (SEB, 2006). The MLSA permits US forces to use government facilities for storage and pre-positioning of equipment as part of strategic deployments during US war maneuvers in the Asian-Pacific and Middle Eastern regions. All three agreements (reinforcing the Cold-War vintage 1951 Mutual Defense Pact and the Joint US-RP Military Advisory Group) that legalize a permanent “temporary” U.S. military base of operations within the country eviscerate national sovereignty. Both the Arroyo bureaucracy and the mercenary AFP continue to demonstrate their function as tried-and-tested instruments of US global foreign policy and imperialist aggression.
Today, the new agreement covers “non-traditional threats,” a rubric covering a wide spectrum of reasons including terrorism, drug trafficking, piracy, and disasters such as floods, typhoons, earthquakes and epidemics. According to Arroyo’s factotums, the US is not engaged in actual fighting; instead, US servicemen are merely providing critical combat support services by way of intelligence purveyance, logistics and emergency evacuation for AFP counter-terrorism operations. In addition to Balikatan, Kapit-Bisig war exercises have been carried out with three components: training and equipping the AFP, giving humanitarian and civil assistance, and supporting local military campaigns against Muslim militants (E-Balita, 7/25/06). Counter-terrorism thus merges with anti-narcotics and disaster preparedness to produce the public-relations mantra of fighting “transnational crimes” (E-Balita 5/25/2007).
When typhoon Frank wrought havoc in the islands, Bush dispatched the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier group led by the USS Ronald Reagan to the Philippines allegedly to assist in local relief and recovery efforts with its F-18s and 6,000 crew. Arroyo cited its tasks of aerial damage assessment and search-and-rescue operations. The fleet hovered around the Sulu Sea (where Moro insurgents operate) and Panay Island (where the NPA is active). Senator Rodolfo Biazon and progressive groups questioned Arroyo’s welcoming of nuclear-powered vessels (which violates the Philippine Constitution’s ban on the entry of nuclear weapons) and the secrecy of its movements (Juliet Labog-Javellana, “US aircraft carrier stays at edge of RP waters,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 6/28/2008). Arroyo’s flunkeys cheered this “humanitarian” gesture of GI Joes as more consoling than the Presidential group-hug of disaster victims which Arroyo herself couldn’t give while she was tied up in Washington begging for more money to prop up her beleaguered, subalternized regime.
An earlier intrusion of the USS Blue Ridge in February 2007 occurred during Operation Friendship, a community service project with the AFP. The ship was reported to be involved in a goodwill mission, providing medical assistance and building furniture for a school in Manila (http://rjhm.janes.com/21 March 2007). It was also in this year that the joint war-games named “Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT)” to enhance the interoperability of the navy and marines were transferred from Subic and Zambales in Luzon to Zamboanga and Basilan, known bailiwicks of the ASG and the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah (EBalita, May 25, 2007).
One other alibi for US military presence in the Philippines is provided by the Pentagon doctrine of “stability operations,” non-combat activities aimed at “quieting domestic disturbances” such as the U.S. pacification drive (1899-1916) to suppress native and Moro resistance, leading to the genocide of 1.4 million Filipinos. The chief excuse for US military presence, however, invokes the threat of international and domestic “terrorism” which justifies U.S. security support for development projects and AFP counterinsurgency actions. Beginning with the Reagan administration in the eighties up to today, the U.S. doctrine of “low intensity warfare” envisioned a flexible combination of “economic assistance with psychological operations and security measures” (Michael Klare and Peter Kornbluh, Low-Intensity Warfare, New York 1989). With the demise of the Soviet Union, “low-intensity warfare” evolved into the preventive or preemptive war on Al Qaeda and extremists, including torture, “extraordinary rendition,” and other “shock-and-awe” tactics.
