LuisTeodoro.com

One word summarizes the Mindanao, and perhaps the country’s, present situation. That word is confusion. The word “chaos” is a close second.

How it all began this time is clear enough. As in the year 2000, it began with the government: on the day last month when the Armed Forces launched its attack on the Moro Islamic Liberation Camp’s Buliok stronghold in Pikit, Cotabato.
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This time presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye didn’t use the word “really,” which he likes to append to his statements on government policy.

Bunye apparently thinks that punctuating his sentences with “really” convinces people that what he’s saying is true. As in his statement a few weeks ago that the Arroyo administration is for peace in the Middle East—really.
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It must be a coincidence that the bombing of the Davao airport occurred shortly after the Arroyo administration was found out, and then backtracked, on its plan to have US combat troops in Sulu.

It must be a coincidence that the same administration did not rule out the coming of US troops, but instead declared that it was moving the Balikatan “exercises” to a venue other than Sulu, which could very well be Central Mindanao.
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The Los Angeles Times report by John Hendren and Richard Paddock published by this newspaper on Sunday established at least three facts crucial to our understanding of the Arroyo administration’s culpability in the now postponed deployment of US combat troops in Sulu.

The first is that, when it was found out, US and Philippine defense officials had already agreed “in private” on the involvement of US troops in combat.
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The focus of current United States and British justification for war on Iraq is “regime change.”

The argument is that Saddam Hussein is a dictator who has tortured, attacked and killed his own people. His passing will mean the flowering of democracy in Iraq and the Middle East. Therefore he must be removed from office. The United States and the British will do it, toward which purpose they have massed some 200,000 troops in the Persian Gulf and surrounding states.
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It has become increasingly difficult to find any rational basis for what Gloria Macapagal Arroyo—allegedly President of the Philippines and commander-in-chief of its armed forces—is doing. Unless, however, she is neither, and still has her eyes on 2004.

If, as already suspected, she has surrendered control over the government to the Philippine military in the hope of keeping its support once she announces that she’s changed her mind and would run for the presidency come that critical year, both what she’s been doing and not doing could at least be understood.
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