Pathetic and illogical
February 8th, 2003
The U.S. war on Iraq will have at least unforeseen consequences. There are predictions, however, that the world will witness an oil crisis the likes of which it has not seen before should the United States launch its war of aggression against that small, weak and already devastated country.
A period of instability in the entire Middle East has also been predicted, even if the United States succeeds in quickly ousting Saddam Hussein. A wave of terrorist attacks against the United States Britain, and whatever other countries that join the “coalition” that George W. Bush has cobbled together could follow the instant the U.S. starts hostilities.
Stock markets will fall everywhere, with the war possibly triggering a global depression. The overall result could be a world made even more dangerous, thanks to the doctrine of aggressive war the United States has adopted, and the almost inevitable response to it by its targets.
Certainly the Philippines will suffer from it. The economy could deteriorate further, as the oil crisis hits home and drives the cost of living sky-high. The remittances from the country’s 1.5 million overseas workers in the Middle East—remittances that, at about $8 billion annually, have been keeping the economy afloat—could shrink to a trickle by the end of 2003 as war forces Middle East employers to cut jobs, or as overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are forced to return home in droves.
The return of one and a half million OFWs fleeing from war to a country where unemployment is up would further devastate the economy, and lead to unforeseen social and even political consequences in the Philippines.
Despite the apparent determination of many OFWs to stay on in the Middle East, an imminent threat to their lives in their places of work could force them to change their minds.
A war on Iraq could spill over into its neighboring states, into Kuwait, for example, as well as into Israel. The possible use of nuclear weapons, both by the United States and Israel should the war be prolonged and should it involve Israel, would considerably heighten the OFWs’ risk, as would the use of chemical and biological weapons by an Iraqi government forced to use those weapons—if it indeed has them—against superior U.S. forces.
In these circumstances the logical and rational response of the Philippine government would have been caution at the very least, or at most an outright expression of opposition to a war that would benefit only the clique of madmen now in control of the U.S. government, and realize the vainglorious dreams of total U.S. global domination by the right-wing U.S. think tanks.
Ironically, right on the very day she returned from Kuwait, President Arroyo once again expressed the same full support for U.S. aggression in the Middle East that she has expressed in the past.
The spectacle of the president of a small country, 1.5 million of whose citizens would be in the line of fire should a war break out in the Middle East, declaring support for such a war can only be described as a pathetic and irrational display of subservience to her U.S. patron. It is also a policy of near-treacherous indifference to the country’s clear national interests, and in patent defiance of them.
The re-declaration of that irrational policy seems to have been at least partly influenced by the results of Mrs. Arroyo’s Kuwait visit. But certainly Mrs. Arroyo has enough sense to realize that the good cheer OFWs showed her during her two day visit to Kuwait masked their deepest concerns as well as their sense of helplessness.
Filipino workers in the Middle East know that they could be injured, killed or suffer other consequences should war break out in Iraq. They feel, however, that they can’t do anything about it, returning to the Philippines being virtually unthinkable.
“There is nothing here for them,” said a relative of several OFWs working as domestics in Kuwait. “They would end up salesladies, earning P80 a day.”
In short, between losing their jobs and the money they bring in, and risking their lives, the OFW choice is clear. That Filipino overseas workers are forced to make such impossible choices incidentally condemns the succession of governments since Marcos’s that have failed to provide the economic opportunities that would otherwise have kept them home with their families.
Rather than return home and face the economic uncertainties that before they left had kept them and their families poor, many of them, responding to possible misfortune as generations of Filipinos have, say bahala na, let the future take care of itself. It is in the context of the Filipino’s undying hope that, fate and God willing, things will turn out well anyway, that the OFWs Mrs. Arroyo met in Kuwait asked that she tell their relatives at home not to worry.
Mrs. Arroyo indeed told OFW relatives who came to greet her upon her return to the Philippines Tuesday that “they were relaxed and happy to see me.” In that statement lurks Mrs. Arroyo’s real purpose in visiting Kuwait—a purpose that had previously escaped government officials themselves as well as the media. That purpose was to harden the OFWs’ resolve, despite the great risks they face, to stay on in their jobs—and incidentally to bask in their adulation.
Indeed if Mrs. Arroyo expected the OFWs in Kuwait to weep and to convey their innermost fears to her, she would have been totally unfamiliar with Filipino psychology, one of whose sterling vices is the determination to put up a brave front even as governments crash and bombs begin to fall.
Of course they will appear relaxed. Of course they will be happy to see the president of the homeland they’ve left at great cost to their sense of family and community, as they’re happy to see anyone, but specially high government officials, from the Philippines.
Apparently expecting exactly the kind of response she received, Mrs. Arroyo upon her return to the Philippines pretended to take their ease at face value, even as she claims to have put in place a P1 billion contingency plan (suspiciously vulnerable to the usual grafters that infest her government) that will include repatriating OFWs back to the Philippines should it be necessary.
Visibly elated upon her return to the Philippines, apparently she thought that her government need not worry, the OFWs will not have to be ferried home at great cost to the government and at the peril of reduced remittances.
Did Mrs. Arroyo decide that the OFWs’ display of apparent good cheer also clears the way for her latest expression of support for the U.S, war on Iraq, and right after she met with U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki?
No one can be faulted for concluding that Mrs. Arroyo’s statement soon after that meeting—that the U.N. would “lose credibility” if it did not use force against Iraq, upon whom she heaped “the responsibility to avoid conflict”—was occasioned by Shisenki’s reading her the appropriate instructions from Washington.
All of which amounts to a policy that’s not only pathetic and illogical, but also dangerous. It is a policy made on the run and on the say so of the United States that’s dangerous to the country’s millions of OFWs in the Middle East, dangerous to this country’s economy and well being, and worse—should its support trigger a terrorist response—to the very national security that the Arroyo government has time and again trotted out as a reason for its equally shortsighted military re-engagement with the United States.
(abs-cbnNEWS.com, February 5, 2003)