Not too long ago, the U.S. government stampeded the entire Philippine military and police forces to locate a missing American woman named Julia Campbell, ostensibly a Peace Corps member. She was found dead and buried in a shallow grave up in Ifugao Province. She must have been a very valuable asset to her government that American officials did not hesitate to bamboozle their Filipino bloodhounds to find her. The Americans never officially explained their big deal over Julia Campbell. They must have felt no need to explain anything to their Filipino colonial subjects. After all, Americans regularly flush Filipino sovereignty down the toilet. So why explain anything.
Then came the issue of rapist Daniel Smith’s jail location. While the issue was being studied by the Court of Appeals, the Americans illegally transferred (without a court order) Daniel Smith to the U.S. embassy, with great and illegal assistance from the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG). No official protest was forthcoming from the poor dumb carabaos, except for a handful of activists. Eventually, Smith was sent home. His Mafioso godfathers made sure of that.
Then the Americans almost succeeded in dismembering the Philippines by officially endorsing the Bangsa Moro Juridical Entity (BJE) in some provinces in Mindanao and Palawan. Muslim expectations and passions went to overdrive and massacres of innocent people were committed.
And then there is the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) treaty that is not a treaty for the Americans but is a treaty for the Filipinos because the Americans said it is a treaty (for poor dumb carabaos), therefore it is a treaty. Is that clear? Therefore, armed with a non-treaty treaty, the Americans have stationed hundreds of elite killers in Mindanao ostensibly to train Filipino soldiers to hunt and kill anti-American Abu Sayyaf terrorists. Pro-American terrorists among the MILF are not terrorists by American definition and so are not to be touched by Filipino soldiers.
And now we have the latest news of American mercenaries, euphemistically called contractors, using locations in Subic and Clark for training other mercenaries in the art of killing people. Some American Macabebe Scouts in the Philippine government obviously authorized the criminal entry of the Blackwater mercenaries and criminal use of Subic and Clark.
Filipinos have to confront hard existential questions about all this:
Can you really believe the Philippines is a free and independent country?
Isn’t it true that the Philippines is a banana territory of the United States like Guam, Saipan, and the Marshall Islands?
Can you accept the fact that elected and unelected government officials are traitors who have betrayed Filipinos to foreigners like the Americans?
What should be done about all these outrages?
The answer is howling in the wind. – ? Allan Tolentino
(The writer is an economist and former classmate of the Editor of this paper at the Ateneo de Manila University.)