Home is a distant place

I remembered Sharbat Gula last Sunday. She with the beautiful face framed by a veil, she with the stunning sea-green eyes with flecks of brown, pupils constricted, gazing out from the National Geographic brochure that circulated around the world for several years. Sharbat Gula was a 1985 NG cover girl with no name. But she gave a face to the plight of war refugees the world over.

She was simply called ``Afghan refugee.’’ No one knew, not even photographer Steve McCurry, what her name was until 17 years later. I did write about her two years ago when this NG poster girl, after a long search, was tracked down somewhere in Afghanistan. With the use of scientific methods, she was identified through the pools of her eyes.

I remembered Sharbat Gula last Sunday, World Refugee Day. This year’s theme is ``A Place Called Home.’’ Note that I didn’t say that it was celebrated. Observed, is more appropriate. For what is there to celebrate? Photos and television footage showed, not people in celebration, but human beings with longing in their eyes.

Commemorated is an appropriate word too, if the courage of those who left home, crossed borders and lost their lives in the process are to be taken into consideration. The quest for freedom--from want, from fear--and to leave home to find a new one in a strange place requires much courage. Brave are those who made the step, even braver are those who chose to lead and serve, putting their own interests aside so that others may live free, or simply survive.

Several brave individual women and men who have dedicated their lives in this way have been honored in the recent years by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) and have been written about. It is good that the young get to read about their great deeds.



There is one special person who was honored in 1964, whose life and struggle unravels like a movie. I know this because RMAF is preparing a book for the young generation, on the lives of the special people who have been honored in the past 50 years.

Father Augustine Nguyen Lac Hoa was one of them. He was a lifesaver, refugee, soldier, priest. World Refugee Day is for people like him and for the 17 million refugees worldwide for whom, right now, home is a distant place.

Fr. Hoa’s life and work would make a dramatic suspense movie. War and strife, escape and death-defying stunts, hunger and disease, faith and politics. His story is about a journey across several countries and the search for freedom and a place to call home. It is a story about human endurance in the face of oppression and a people’s continuing struggle to break free.

Fr. Hoa had seen it all. Said he: ``You may say that it is easy for me as a priest to think of love above war, but facts have proved that love is the only way for us to win. It is the only way for us to survive.’’(Note: This par. could be deleted.)

Fr. Hoa was born in China in 1908. He trained to be a Catholic priest. While serving as a pastor, he was conscripted into the military and led a band of guerrillas to fight the invading Japanese. The war over, he thought he could go back to his priestly duties. But the new communist government wanted Catholics to give up allegiance to Rome. To make a long story short, Fr. Hoa resisted. He left the country but upon his return, he was arrested.

After his release, Fr. Hoa escaped to North Vietnam. He helped more than 2,000 people who wanted to escape persecution to cross over. But their stay in North Vietnam was short. Ho Chi Minh’s communist forces had control of the area and constantly harassed them.

Fr. Hoa’s search for a new home for the band of refugees led him to Laos and Thailand. Finally, they decided on Cambodia. With the help of the French authorities, many of them were airlifted to Cambodia. They settled in Kratie Province, 40 miles from the Combodian-Vietnamese border.

Well, what do you know, Cambodia recognized communist China in 1958 and the refugees again feared for their lives. The refugees were again on the run. Their destination: South Vietnam.

The weary stateless band settled in a place that was hardly habitable. They buckled down to work to transform the place so it would feel like home. Fr. Hoa named their new home Binh Hung, meaning to flatten and clear. Brackish water, mosquitoes and dense forests did not daunt them. With help from the government, the refugees were able to buy farm animals and till their little farms.

Then the communist Viet Cong started to make their presence felt. With his combat experience, Fr. Hoa was able to train the refugees to fight back. Their village was turned into self-defense barracks with Fr. Hoa in command. Villagers returned fire when attacked. Their obsolete firearms and ammunition were no match to their attackers’ firepower but the refugees stood their ground.

In 1960, their village was always under siege the whole year round. They were practically marooned. Help came via helicopter drops of supplies from the government, the Catholic Relief services and other groups.

Because of their bravery, Fr. Hoa’s fighters became a regular unit of the Armed Forces. They called themselves Sea Swallows. Fr. Hoa’s religious superiors tolerated his soldier-priest role and recognized the villagers’ dependence on him.

Meanwhile, the Viet Cong continued to make life difficult, destroying crops and making hit-and-run raids on the village. But by 1963 the Sea Swallows was able to secure some 200 square kilometers populated by 18,000 inhabitants and defended by some 400 guerillas. But the fight was far from over…

There’s more but we’re running out of space.

Remember, we have our own internal refugees who have been displaced by the wars in many fronts. They, too, yearn for home.

Gawad for Bishop Labayen

Kagitingan summarizes the best in a human being--nobility, courage, integrity, strength of character, greatness of spirit. It derives from the word magiting.

What does it mean to be magiting? Filipino hero Emilio Jacinto defined it in the cartilla for wanna-be Katipuneros: ``…may magandang asal, may isang pangungusap, may dangal at puri, di nangaapi at di nagpapaapi, marunong magdamdam at ginugugol ang buhay, pagod at talino sa pagiging mabuting anak ng bayan at ng Diyos.’’ (…of good character, has word of honor, integrity and purity, does not oppress and does not allow oppression, sensitive to others and dedicates his/her life, energy and talent toward being a good citizen and child of God.)

Last June 12, 106th anniversary of Philippine Independence, Bishop Julio X. Labayen, retired bishop of the Prelature of Infanta in Quezon received the Gawad Kagitingan Award. The venue couldn’t have been more appropriate—the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City where the names of those who served and died for freedom are etched.

Behind the award was Management and Organization Development for Empowerment, an NGO working for the emancipation of farmers.

This year’s honoree is certainly most deserving. He has served the cause of the poor of Infanta and various sectors in the field of social action. In his response speech at the Gawad rites, the bishop, now in his late 70s, retraced his steps in the battlefields.



Who is Bishop Labayen? Many years ago, I wrote: ``Bishop Julio Xavier Labayen, a member of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites, is viewed by many as `controversial’, having figured in clashes with the Marcos dictatorship. In a sea of conservatives in the Philippine Church hierarchy, the bishop is considered a voice in the wilderness.’’ I had mixed the metaphors there but the bishop seems to have been pleased with it because he used it as a blurb in his book.

If you want to get to know the bishop more, read his book, ``Revolution and the Church of the Poor’’. This is about what the bishop thinks is an all-important ingredient for a revolution to work--spirituality. The other day I pulled out the book from the shelf to refresh my memory.

I stress the bishop’s being a Carmelite--steeped in the spirituality of Carmelite mystics John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila--to contrast with his being perceived as a ``leftie’’ by right-wing military elements and even by his mitered colleagues.

In his treatise, Labayen does not make an apologia or defense of church people romancing Marxism and so-called liberation movements. Far from it. What Labayen wants to see is ``a letting go of what has become irrelevant and obstructive, a going beyond…a dying to what has ceased to serve life.’’ He points out the failure of revolutionary movements to deliver. Some things just didn’t work. Or don’t work anymore. Or were bound to fail. So, hear ye.

Labayen speaks, drawing from his almost four decades of pastoral experience as bishop prelate of Infanta, interwoven ``with the dark strands of trials, crisis, harassment, persecution and marginalization, and also with the bright strands of pastoral breakthroughs, deep insights, qualitative turning points, reassuring faith-experiences of the living God of history.’’

Labayen presents two models of the Church: the ``imperialist’’ Christendom model and the Church of the Poor. He points out that ``while the Church may be historically shaped and conditioned by history, the same Church was founded by Jesus Christ to shape history.’’

And so where did revolutions go wrong? He cites Europe and China and lingers in Latin America, Nicaragua especially, where the Church played a vital role in the revolution. The outcomes, he says, either fall short of the initial noble intentions or, sometime after victory, short-changed the masses.

At home, he scores the Christians for National Liberation for failing ``to influence the revolutionary process to make it more humane, compassionate and less rigid.’’ He notes that cultural and psychological perspectives are often not taken into consideration in revolutionary affairs.

It cannot all be politics and economics, Labayen points out. The human heart and the human spirit, he argues, also seek to be liberated.

And so he does not tire of presenting another paradigm--Christ. Not the Christ conveniently portrayed as a radical to polarize social classes, but the Christ who preaches an interior revolution in the human heart and spirit.

He dares suggest that activists ``understand the contribution of the mystics and psychologists…It may well be that here we encounter a yet untapped inner resource that we have not harnessed for revolution. Could it be that herein lies the ingredient that is lacking for the satisfactory and fulfilling outcome?’’

I was stumped by that. For I had long waited for someone to say that.

Dig into your inner well, the bishop exhorts and offers words from John of the Cross’ Spiritual Canticle: ``An then we will go on/to the high caverns on the rock/Which are so well concealed;/ There we shall enter/ And taste the fresh juice of the pomegranates.’’ Ah, the pomegranates.

If, as they say, John of the Cross, if peeled and stripped of the Christian layers, is really a Buddhist monk, I think, Bishop Labayen, if stripped of his activist label, is truly a contemplative, a monk at prayer, on his knees in the bloody fields of battle.

****

A few days from now, for the first time ever in the Philippines, more than 3,000 priests and 100 bishops will gather for five days in intense prayer and reflection on their life and mission, as brothers in communion, responding to the call to discipleship under ``the one, true Shepherd.’’

The longest day

Qu’il n’est pas d’avenir sans mémoire. There can be no future without memory. French President Jacques Chirac said this at the D-day 60th anniversary celebration in Normandy a few days ago. The TV camera panned the crowd and focused on a group of aging soldiers from different countries that formed the Allied Forces during World War II. Mostly in their 80s, these men now surely have to live with blurring eyesight, weakened knees and fading memories. One of them tried to suppress a sob but failed. My heart was in pieces.

They were, Chirac said, the enfants du monde jetés si jeunes dans le feu de la guerre, the children of the world thrown so young into the fire of war. Today they are young no more, but the memories, I am sure, continue to burn and blister the core of their beings. What was in the minds of these brave survivors as they sat there, this brilliant morning of June 6, 60 years after they stormed the beaches of Normandy to pave the way for the liberation of Western Europe from the clutches of Hitler?

And what was it like then when, as US Pres. Bush waxed, they set out ``in the half light of a Tuesday morning long ago’’? (Arrgh, I grabbed pen and paper to jot that down.)

Those in my generation weren’t human beings yet at that time. We were born in the half light of the post-war era. Many of the war scenes came to us through the war movies that I watched as a kid--``To Hell and Back’’, ``Tobruk’’. ``Guadalcanal Diary’’, ``Heaven Knows Mr. Allison’’, ``Sink the Bismarck!’’ ``Target Zero’’, ``Back to Bataan’’ to name a few. And, of course, ``The Longest Day’’ (1962) based on the best-selling book of war historian Cornelius Ryan.

To get into the D-Day mood I watched ``The Longest Day’’ the other day. It was a 50th anniversary commemorative VCD version (not pirated ha, P199 at the supermarket near the Inquirer) and it said on the jacket that it was in the original brilliant black and white. Well, no thanks to technology, the film has been turned into technicolor.

``The Longest Day’’ which had three directors could be a crash course on D-Day history. Some critics compare it with Spielberg’s ``Saving Private Ryan’’ (2002) which also starts out bloody on the beaches of Normandy. In the former the soldiers got shot and died while in the latter, you’d see intestines being shoved back and the badly wounded crying out for their mothers. They knew what hit them and that was the terrible part.

Many personal accounts have seen print over the years but words cannot totally capture the pain and the terror and the courage inside those who were there. And now, what is it like, in the half light of the survivors’ memory?

I looked at the black and white photographs of the beach landing by famous war photographer Robert Capa, he who shot that famous Spanish Civil War photo of a soldier being hit by a bullet. Capa’s Normandy B&Ws were the real stuff, I thought. Helmeted heads bobbing on the waters, crawlers on the sand. Soldiers—some 156,000 of them—were making their way to the shore to face Nazi fire and Capa himself had to make his own beach head. His watery shots showed his own struggle.

D-Day is considered the largest and most ambitious amphibious landing in history. That single day, more than 156,000 American, British, Canadian, French and other Allied troops arrived on board 5,000 ships. About 11,000 planes rained fire on Normandy to pave the way. The combined force was meant to stun Hitler’s Nazi forces then occupying France and to liberate the rest of Europe. More soldiers in the ensuing months would come to finish the campaign.

The one-day invasion was code-named Operation Overlord and was under US. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. The Normandy beaches were code-named Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno. Casualties were high at Omaha beach where Allied soldiers faced unrelenting fire as soon as they stepped out of the barges. In Pointe du Huc, soldiers clambered up craggy cliffs. They were like so many ants falling to the ground.

By August Paris would be liberated but the loss in men was heavy—about 10 percent of two million troops.

Elsewhere—in the Philippines and the rest of Asia--war was also being waged at that time. The world was in shambles.

****

The Rescission Act of 1946 says that the service of Filipinos who fought alongside the Americans during WWII ``shall not be deemed to be or to have been service in the military or national forces of the United States or any component thereof or any law of the United States conferring rights, privileges, or benefits.’’

That is being repealed now in the U.S. Congress. But let me share a letter posted in the Plaridel e-group that has reference to this and to Filipino veterans getting a little something at last. Many in the e-group surely know the writer and the addressee personally.

Dear Melissa,

I have lost all faith in America. They will just wait for our veterans to die. I have uncles that joined the Death March and fought in that war. They have said on a number of occasions that they never fought for pay. They fought for their country.

It is true that many of the veterans are poor and that a few dollars would help ease their situation. I don't believe we ever had to be part of that war. We were just used.

The sooner we come to terms with the true nature of our relationship with America, the better for us. It’s hard to talk with members of the Filipino Community in America. Second-generation Filipinos in the States may never comprehend how unjust America is to small countries.

But America has been good to many of you. That's okay. It lessens my resentment.

Love,
Cynthia

The Noy-pi redux

I was with some friends last Saturday, leisurely driving toward C-5. A car with government plates was ahead of us. When traffic slowed down, the car’s driver tossed an empty plastic cup outside the window. We took note of the car’s plate number and model and the time and place. (SEK214, black Excel Hyundai, Katipunan corner Santolan Road, around 11:15 a.m.)

So why do many Filipinos think the road is their trash can? Why do many Filipino males urinate wherever they please? Why is it that where precisely it says, ``Bawal Omehi Deto’’ (sic), it stinks? (Think of the many versions and spellings of that warning.) And where ``Huwag Tapon Basura Dito, Fine P50, By Order’’ is scrawled, a garbage mound arises?

Are Filipino drivers color blind that while the traffic light remains red, many zoom past it? Why do commuters wait for their ride in the middle of the road and not on the sidewalk? Is it coincidental that many employees in some government offices come from the same family tree, town or barrio?

And why is it that despite the extent of poverty in the Philippines, the suicide rate is low compared to that of economic giants? How could a tragic event, such as Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, unleash so many jokes and so much laughter--directed at his killers, of course--from grieving millions? Why do we spend so much for fiestas then fast the rest of the year? How do we make do with so little? Why do Filipinos generally do well in foreign countries?

Why are we always smiling? And gosh, what are we smiling about?

And what’s wrong with us? Is it cultural, structural, moral, spiritual? What is the problem? Is it the home, the church, the school, the state, the weather, the food and water? Is it our genes?



Much is being made of the Presidential Commission on Values Formation that was recently set up. Is it the answer? Will this work in prodding us to economic progress and, uh, eternal happiness? Will this increase our Filipino pride and self-respect? Already, not everybody agrees on the same thing concerning this new commission.

Remember the government’s Moral Recovery Program more than 10 years ago? Two senate committees--on Social Justice, Welfare and Development and on Education, Arts and Culture--commissioned a study of the strengths and weaknesses of the Filipino character ``with a view to solving the social ills and strengthening the nation’s moral fiber.’’

I dug up the magazine piece I wrote on this years ago, with Jess Abrera’s cartoons spicing up the article (``What’s Wrong/ What’s Right about the Noy-Pi?’’ Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Oct. 2, 1988). I had a good laugh. Reading it again, I thought, we have been at this (the values thing) for more than a decade. If the disgusting comportment of our lawmakers in the canvassing of votes that is going on right now is any indication, then we have not moved forward in the values department, we have regressed. It also says a lot about those who elected them.

To remind, the 1988 study tapped experts in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, sociology and other social sciences, that is, the shrinks and the behavior modifiers, to figure out the Pinoy. Social psychologist Dr. Patricia Licuanan, then Ateneo vice president, headed the project. Nine task forces, composed of big names from different disciplines buckled down to work. The result of the study were based on interviews and a nationwide survey. This involved some 2,000 respondents.

According to the study (``A Moral Recovery Program: Building a People, Building a Nation’’) the strengths of the Filipino could be classified under these categories: Pakikipagkapwa-tao, family orientation, joy and humor, flexibility, adaptability and creativity, hard work and industry, faith and religiosity, ability to survive.

The Filipino’s weaknesses are a drama in themselves: Extreme personalism, extreme family centeredness, lack of discipline, passivity and lack of initiative, colonial mentality, kanya-kanya syndrome, lack of self-analysis and self-reflection.

Project director Licuanan said then that her group shifted through a lot of data and had to fight their academic instincts when they put the results together. They wanted to come across as simply as possible. They could have come up with an endless list of traits with fancy and technical names, but they chose to limit themselves to a few major ones under which other traits could be classified.

Critics could have reason to harp that the study dwelt mainly on the cultural factors rather than on the structural. Licuanan explained that they were not denying the structural factors. In fact, they started with the premise that we have structural defects, that we cannot wait for that comprehensive revolution to happen before we do anything about ourselves. We have to start somewhere.

The roots of the Filipino character as identified and classified may trigger not only much debate but also reflection. These roots, as identified by the study, are: family and environment, social environment, culture and language, colonial history, the educational system, religion, the economic environment, the political environment, mass media, leadership and role models.

There had been proposals of strategies for change, among them, the development of ``a national ideology that can summon all our resources into the task of lifting national pride and productivity.’’
Licuanan and her group had proposed teaching modules for the long term. She said then that she would rather not entrust the task of moral recovery and its implementation to a single institution. Well, yes, otherwise it would look like brainwashing.

Berg’s father speaks

I am now going off for my very brief summer break. I take with me the words of Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg, the US contractor beheaded on video in Iraq this month by a group believed to be linked to al-Qaida. This is an extract from his message of support for the Stop The War Coalition's demonstration, End the Torture–Bring the Troops Home Now, held in London last week. This was printed in The Guardian on May 21, 2004.

``My son, Nick, was my teacher and my hero. He was the kindest, gentlest man I know; no, the kindest, gentlest human being I have ever known. He quit the Boy Scouts of America because they wanted to teach him to fire a handgun. Nick, too, poured into me the strength I needed, and still need, to tell the world about him.

``People ask me why I focus on putting the blame for my son's tragic and atrocious end on the Bush administration. They ask: ``Don't you blame the five men who killed him?’’ I have answered that I blame them no more or less than the Bush administration, but I am wrong: I am sure, knowing my son, that somewhere during their association with him these men became aware of what an extraordinary man my son was. I take comfort that when they did the awful thing they did, they weren't quite as in to it as they might have been. I am sure that they came to admire him.

``I am sure that the one who wielded the knife felt Nick's breath on his hand and knew that he had a real human being there. I am sure that the others looked into my son's eyes and got at least a glimmer of what the rest of the world sees. And I am sure that these murderers, for just a brief moment, did not like what they were doing.



``George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts.

``George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily. Donald Rumsfeld said that he took responsibility for the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners. How could he take that responsibility when there was no consequence? Nick took the consequences.

``Even more than those murderers who took my son's life, I can't stand those who sit and make policies to end lives and break the lives of the still living.

``Nick was not in the military, but he had the discipline and dedication of a soldier. Nick Berg was in Iraq to help the people without any expectation of personal gain. He was only one man, but through his death he has become many. The truly unselfish spirit of giving your all to do what you know in your own heart is right even when you know it may be dangerous; this spirit has spread among the people who knew Nick, and that group has spread and is spreading all over the world.

``So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labeled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honoring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.

``George Bush's ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction, and it has allowed a chain reaction of events that led to the unlawful detention of my son which immersed him in a world of escalated violence.

``Were it not for Nick's detention, I would have had him in my arms again. That detention held him in Iraq not only until the atrocities that led to the siege of Fallujah, but also the revelation of the atrocities committed in the jails in Iraq, in retaliation for which my son's wonderful life was put to an end.

``My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.

``Many have offered to pray for Nick and my family. I appreciate their thoughts, but I ask them to include in their prayers a prayer for peace. And I ask them to do more than pray. I ask them to demand peace now.’’

Habitat for Humanity 2004. Last week, Inquirer employees again took time off to help build homes for low-income families in Mandaluyong. We were appropriately attired, of course, when we reported to Habitat to fulfill our date with hammer and saw, spade and hoe, gravel and sand.

This was unlike Habitat 1999 (the year former US Pres. Jimmy Carter came to help build and I got to sit down with and interview him) when the Inquirer built a whole house for a poor family in Cavite. This year, Habitat switched to on-site improvement of homes in congested urban areas. This entailed demolition of decrepit structures and rebuilding on the same sites where the beneficiaries lived.

The beheading

A reader, Ms. Gloria Parillas Earl, sent a letter to the editor (PDI 5/18/04) castigating me for what I said in my column piece (``Taguba’s report on Abu Ghraib’’, PDI 5/13/04) on the abuses--sexual, physical, psychological--committed by U.S. Army personnel against Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.

She asked: ``Where is Doyo’s disgust over the videotaped beheading of Nick Berg, whose passion for helping others got him into Iraq?’’

Another reader who read the letter promptly wrote to me via email and agreed with Ms. Earl on ``my lacking in courage’’ to condemn. He/she said I ``had written fair and balanced columns generally in the past but you seem, to `lose it’ when it pertains to issues about war and social injustice.’’ Too anti-U.S meddling, too pro-poor?

But a reader from San Francisco reacted to Ms. Earl’s letter by questioning Berg’s presence in Iraq. What he said was not very flattering to the dead.

So early and I was spilling my coffee.



I did not get to see the brief and digitized video clip of the beheading on CNN until later and tremble at its impact, that is, after I had masticated the U.S. senate investigation where Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, author of the report on the abuses, Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone and Lt. Gen. Lance Smith testified. That column was on Taguba’s report, which I had to download from the Internet, not on Berg’s beheading.

Yes, I meant to write about the beheading separately for today, and I planned to search for the clip on the Internet, if it was there at all, hoping I would have the stomach for it. I wanted more details on it. Maybe I’d notice something others didn’t see?

I was castigated too soon. Still, I respect and recognize readers’ impassioned reactions, their feeling strongly about something and making it known. They care.

Now the letter. Ms. Earl wrote: ``Ceres P. Doyo wanted me, an American, to raise hell with our leaders for the `disgusting’ ways a few coalition guards treated their prisoners at Abu Ghraib.’’

Ms. Earl, I never said that. What I said was: ``If I were an American I would be red-faced. If I were an American I would write my very own individual letter of apology to the world, to the people of Iraq and to the detainees in Abu Ghraib prison.’’ If I were…but then I am not.

``As an American,’’ Ms. Earl said, ``I do not apologize for our brave coalition men and women who run where wimps and cowards dare not go to defend the world’s freedom and liberty…’’ She also said, ``I am a Filipino too, but although I was ashamed of the Moros who beheaded the American hostages…I did not ask Doyo to apologize for her Moro countrymen’s barbarism. Neither did I blame the Philippine leaders nor did I ask them to apologize.’’

Did I say, you Americans must apologize? Pres. Bush didn’t have to. But I don’t want to sound facetious. A point I wanted to make in that article was that the men and women who committed the abuses were wearing the American flag, they were there in Iraq, carrying out America’s self-righteous role as, uh, ``constable of the world.’’ They were supposed to be on the moral high ground, to show those of us from backward societies how not to be barbarians and how they would bring about their vision of peace, their Pax Americana.

A preacher preaching love and then rapes a prostitute has more to answer for than a teenager who also commits rape.

When I saw those pictures of naked, abused detainees (many of them may have been terrorists), it was not condemnation that right away rose in my heart. It was the feeling of betrayal, of being let down. Like, how could you, so young, so fresh-faced, be like the terrorists? How could your leaders have missed out on teaching you something so important? You shamed your own people.

A rabid America hater might clap and say, ha, you’re just like your enemy, the terrorists. But this issue is not just about global terrorism. At the bottom line, this is also about having a sense of the worth of every human being, every creature.

These soldiers were being paid by the taxes of toiling American people. Could they not at least have been properly briefed by their seniors about human rights? That was what Taguba’s testimony on the breakdown of discipline was pointing at.

The beheading of Berg, and earlier, the beheading of journalist Pearl, said it loud and clear. The perpetrators were evil personified.

Ms. Earl, you sure would not want your American soldiers to be on the same level with terrorists and bandits. Those ``Moro countrymen’’ of mine you referred to, those who beheaded your fellow Americans, they do not want to be Filipinos. They do not carry my flag. I do not pay my taxes to them. My taxes in fact go to efforts to obliterate their evil, with little left for the most forgotten of this land.

And when, in the past, our own military committed abuses learned from the CIA, sure, I did stick out my own neck many times on many occasions and suffered for it. That was not heroism, that was journalism.

I did not overlook the pain of Ms. Earl’s compatriot, Abu Sayyaf hostage Gracia Burnham (``Gracia on the mystic road of love’’). But in deference to her pain, I chose not to write about how her missionary group was operating here. It had nothing to do with the hostage-taking. In the same way that what Berg was doing in Iraq, his being American or Jewish or caucasian, cannot not justify his beheading.

For those interested, American veteran journalist Alfred W. McCoy, who has written a lot about the Philippines, had an article in the Boston Globe last May 14 titled ``Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIA’s Manual.’’

Taguba’s report on Abu Ghraib

I stayed up very late the other night to watch live on CNN the U.S. Senate investigation of the torture committed by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison, with U.S. Army Major General Antonio Taguba, Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone and Lt. Gen. Lance Smith testifying.

Philippines-born Taguba, a true-brown kayumanggi, is the author of the report that details the shameless acts done to Iraqi detainees by members of the 800th MP Brigade assigned in Abu Ghraib. Gen. Taguba reaped a rain of praises for his no-nonsense report and testimony and for calling intentional abuse intentional abuse.

You must have seen those disgusting photographs that came out starting last week, photographs of naked Iraqi detainees being humiliated, tortured, piled one on top of another like carcass. Being photographed and videotaped while in that humiliated state added to the intensity of the torment. The bad news is that there’s more than what we saw in photos.

How could something like this have happened in this day and age? Yes, Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler do not have the monopoly of evil. Their evil spirit lives on in some U.S. military personnel. If I were an American, I would be red-faced. If I were an American citizen I would write my very own individual letter of apology to the world, to the people of Iraq and to the detainees in Abu Ghraib prison.

Senators, among them Sen. Hillary Clinton, focused on the acts of humiliation and torture detailed on page 16 and 17 of Taguba’s 53-page report. I later downloaded the report from the Internet. Here are those portions that the world ought to read not only for their shock value but also so that people may be forewarned about more 9/11s. This is the very thing that begets hatred.



Here’s Gen. Taguba reporting: ``I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:

a)Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees, jumping on their naked feet; b)Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; c)Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; d)Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; e)Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; f)Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; g)Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; h)Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wire to his fingers, toes and penis to simulate electric torture; i)Writing `I am a Rapest’ (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year-old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; j)Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture; k) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; l)Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case, biting and severely injuring a detainee; m) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.’’

There’s more, like breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees, sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate with threats of attack, and in one instance, to bite a detainee.

These torturers could not even spell the word rapist correctly and they were sent there, to run a prison facility and handle detainees? Taguba’s testimony pointed to this lack of proper training and preparation of personnel. He also told the senate that the cameras used were privately owned. Trip lang nila.

And there was this problem that the detainees concerned could not be classified as prisoners of war (POW) who had specific rights under the articles of the Geneva Conventions. The detainees were mostly captured offenders and suspected terrorists. But POW or not, human beings, terrorists included, have the right to be treated humanely.

Taguba also pointed out that very few, if at all, had read a copy of the Geneva Conventions in that neck of Iraq. What? (Why, I even have a copy of my own. The Red Cross has plenty.)

A big let-down for me—the 800th MP Brigade is under the command of Gen. Janis Karpinski, a woman. One of the six or seven suspected perpetrators of the inhumane acts is a woman-soldier. Oh no.

The 53-year-old Taguba has been made much of especially by the Filipino-American communities and publications in the U.S. since his report came out. Born in Sampaloc in 1950, Taguba’s roots are in Cagayan. The general is the son of World War II veteran Tomas Taguba, survivor of the Bataan Death March and recipient of a Bronze Star and a Prisoner of War medal. The elder Taguba had served in South Korea, Germany and Okinawa, spending many years as a motor-pool sergeant. He rose to the rank of sergeant 1st class before he retired in 1962.

In an article in AsianWeek, writer Bert Eljera says Antonio Taguba was 11 when his family moved to Hawaii. After high school, Taguba enrolled at Idaho State University where he graduated in 1972. He joined the U.S. Army and rose through the ranks. He attended prestigious military training schools. He holds three master’s degrees. He commanded a tank company of a mechanized division in Germany and was a battalion commander and then executive officer of the combined Republic of Korea-U.S. Forces in Korea. Taguba is the second Filipino-American general in the U.S. Army.

It was his mother and his grandmother, Taguba said, who had the most influence on his life.