Nintendos don’t win war against rebels

‘The United States has nothing to teach Filipino soldiers on how to fight insurgency.’

The Iraq and Afghanistan theaters, if we remember right, are under the Central Command. The US is bogged down in the war against the insurgents in Iraq and the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. Given the unpopularity of the war of occupation in Iraq, it’s a matter of time before the United States pulls out from that misadventure. Afghanistan, that collection of tribes, looks also ungovernable in the long run.

US credibility is shot. Perhaps it sorely needs a winnable war to restore its global standing as the superpower to be respected and feared. Or perhaps Keating simply wants his own little war. Whatever the reason, we need US meddling in the counter-insurgency campaign like we need a hole in the head.

History books continue to credit US help for the defeat of the communist rebellion in the 1950s. Some revisionist historians ought to take another look into this era and make an accounting of the price of this US-backed victory. The poster boy of the counter-insurgency campaign was Ramon Magsaysay, the "man of the masses" who was installed by the United States as secretary of defense and later as president.

But the Mr. Hyde to Magsaysay’s Dr. Jekyll was Col. Napoleon Valeriano of the dreaded Nenita unit. No AFP unit is probably more drenched in the blood of innocents than Nenita. Forced evacuation, food blockade, torture and murder – name it and Valeriano’s Nenita of the cross-and-bones insignia did it. Compared to Valeriano, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Jovito "The Butcher" Palparan looks like a Boy Scout.

There’s a direct line from Col. Edward Landsdale, the Dr. Frankenstein to Valeriano’s monster, to the current American generals who are engage in "nation-building" in Iraq and Afghanistan using the business end of an M-4 rifle.

Let’s not be fooled by the Abrams tanks, the Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, the Blackhawk helicopters and the Predator unmanned flying vehicles that are the staple of the seeming Nintendo war that US spin masters portray the war of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan to be.

AFP leaders might be salivating at the chance of having these toys in their inventory. But fighting an insurgency is won on the ground. Government forces have to tread the very thin line between legitimate operations and indiscriminate inflicting of "collateral damage" on the innocents. And as the continuing extra-judicial killings show, local security forces have certainly failed in observing the acceptable limits of the use of violence.

The United States has nothing to teach Filipino soldiers on how to fight insurgency. In fact, it is not the AFP’s lack of fighting capability that hobbles the military against the rebels. It is the favoritism and continuing corruption in the top echelon that enable the estimated 10,000 or so communist guerrillas to survive, if not actually flourish.

Add to that the questions over the legitimacy of the Arroyo administration, whose cheating ways were once again demonstrated in the May elections, and its insensitivity to the plight of the poor majority of the people and we have a fertile ground for rebellion.