Exercise Balikatan and U.S. Power Politics

Statement of Capt. Danilo P. Vizmanos PN (ret.)

Convenor, U.S. Troops Out Now (OUT NOW!)

Former Inspector-General, Armed Forces of the Philippines

June 5, 2002

"I vow to unearth a terrorist underworld of training camps in a dozen countries including the Philippines.... Nations would be given a chance to wipe out terrorists themselves.... If they do not act, America will!" 

This was a highlight of President George Bush's "State of the Union" address before the U.S. Congress last January 29. He then followed up with a declaration that the New People's Army is a terrorist organization. 

The message is clear. U.S. military forces intend to stay in the Philippines indefinitely, at least until the last NPA fighter is exterminated. This explains the forging of a Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement whose contents are known only to a small circle of conspirators in the Bush and Arroyo administrations. This so-called "arrangement," actually an imposition by Washington, refers to the setting up of a U.S. logistics base and facilities in the Philippines in anticipation of continuing U.S. military intervention in the country's internal affairs. 

Meanwhile, for almost six months U.S. Special Forces have been giving advice and special training on counterterrorism to Filipino soldiers in Basilan. U.S. authorities were cocksure that with sophisticated, high-tech and state-of-the-art weaponry and gadgetry, the Abu Sayyaf would be wiped out sooner than expected. 

Frustration and a sense of desperation have finally caught up with the "best and the brightest" in the Pentagon. The Abu Sayyaf with American hostages in tow continue to evade at least 5,000 AFP troops and paramilitary forces reinforced by a battalion-strength U.S. Special Forces and support units on a 1,372 square kilometer island.

Apparently running out of options and betraying failure of military operations, the U.S. government has resorted to a $5 million reward offer for information leading to the capture or wiping out of the Abu Sayyaf leadership. This is the same ploy with which U.S. colonial authorities enticed the Macabebes for the capture of the elusive Emilio Aguinaldo more than a hundred years ago. Instead of enriching one or two informers, the money could perhaps serve a better purpose if it were used instead to compensate and alleviate the plight of thousands of victims of atrocities committed by the adversaries in the conflict.

The latest experiment in the Basilan counterterrorism laboratory is the deployment of U.S. Special Forces from battalion to company level. This marks a higher level of U.S. involvement in combat operations in a war zone disguised as a joint military exercise. It further worsens the continuing violation of the Constitution and infringement of the national sovereignty.

These culpable violations abetted by government's methodical deception of the people in order to accommodate the long-range agenda of U.S. power politics are compounded by an utter lack of national dignity and sense of national pride and self-respect at the national leadership level. These are more than enough reasons to condemn President Arroyo and her coterie for their abject puppetry and subservience to foreign predatory interests in exchange for narrow political ends. What makes it even worse is that they have deceived, betrayed and treated the Filipino people no different from docile and innocent lambs being led to the slaughterhouse of imperialist power politics. 

On June 12 the nation will celebrate Independence Day that has lost its meaning and essence. Indefinite U.S. military intervention and continuing intrusion of U.S. government functionaries in the country's internal affairs have made a mockery and myth of what all along has been an illusion of national sovereignty.

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