war on terror

The imperialist US, not a friend but a foe

Published on July 9, 2024 in Countercurrent

US leaders from its president to lawmakers and military chiefs call the Philippines its oldest, longest treaty partner in Asia. Before, the oft-repeated descriptions were “special relations” or “friendship.” Much earlier before that, the relationship was said to be between a big brother teaching its little brown brother “civilization.”

For 125 years now, the US has never lacked for altruistic cover for making use of the Philippines’ human and natural resources for its profit. And, for maintaining a strategic territory to carve other territories and markets in Asia especially China. From 1898, the Philippines has indeed become the oldest or longest bastion in Asia, right at the beginning of the US entry into the world stage as an imperialist power. The imperialist US not only kills and harms the Filipino people, it has used its arsenal of brutal suppression and deception of Filipinos and Americans to launch wars in other countries such as Vietnam.

Far from being a friend, the imperialist US is a cruel, sinister enemy of the Filipino people. It has been blocking the people’s path to genuine freedom and development. It has been the enemy of the Filipino masses since it extended its claws here in 1898.

Below in a nutshell is a bird’s eyeview, a timeline of the imperialist US wars of aggression and deception against the Filipino people.

Filipino-American War since 1898: massacres and atrocities to ‘civilize’ Filipinos

When the US in its first imperialist act seized control of the Philippines from the then victorious revolutionaries, it lied to Filipinos and anti-colonialist Americans. At first the US posed as a friend in 1898. But it used the Filipinos to fight the Spaniards until its colonizing troops arrived in the Philippines. It robbed the people of their valiantly fought independence in the Treaty of Paris—where Spain who was already routed by the Filipinos ceded the Philippines to US for a sum of U$ 20 million, plus protection of Spanish colonialist landholdings or businesses. Shortly after, in 1898, under the guise of US President McKinley’s deceptive proclamation of “Benevolent Assimilation”, the US attacked the Filipino people.

On February 4, 1899 American troops fired shots at Filipino soldiers on a bridge in San Juan, Manila, igniting armed hostilities and officially starting the Filipino-American war. In just a couple of years of massacres and atrocities that horrified even American anti-imperialists and critics, the US tried to downgrade the Filipino armed struggle as mere “Philippine insurrection.”

In 1902, US President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the war was over even though resistance continued and guerrillas were widely supported by the people. Then US General Arthur MacArthur was adamant that Filipinos would need “bayonet treatment for at least a decade”. Despite this, imperialist US leaders hastened to “normalize” the situation to placate critics in the US, to gloss over the terrible slaughter being committed by US troops in the Philippines, and to open the Philippines to economic exploitation at the earliest possible time.

Nevertheless, parts of the country were still turned into a “howling wilderness”, following a series of successful, mass-supported guerrilla attacks against US invaders. In retaliation, US troops shipped to the US the famous Balangiga bell, which was used by Filipino revolutionaries as a signal and a symbol of the concerted defense of the motherland. The Balangiga bell was returned decades later amid Filipino insistence, and despite years of colonial control and miseducation.

Long before the Vietnam war, US troops had resorted to inhuman forms of torture including “water-boarding,” executions, massacres and burning of men, women and children, Filipino fighters tied to and being dragged by horses, plundering of captured and killed revolutionaries and communities, and hamletting or forcing communites into concentration camps. Up to a million died (in a population of six to eight million) as a result of the US war of suppression in the Philippines from 1899 to 1910s.

This brutal war of suppression of Filipinos in 1899 “signaled the start of its [US] global conquest through war and terror,” said the Communist Party of the Philippines in a statement last February marking the 125th year since the American troops first fired shots at Filipino soldiers.

“Benevolent Assimilation” since 1898

Essentially the Philippine-American War has remained, albeit, using not just superior arms but manifold lies, double-dealing and deception. US brutality and plunder has been continuously whitewashed at every step. Though colonial history has presented Fil-Am war as just a short one, it extended to a decade of constant uprising even after Emilio Aguinaldo and his elite clique capitulated to US in 1901.

Fact is, from an armed struggle to overthrow the Spaniards to an armed struggle to counter a new imperialist power, the ilustrado or elite leadership proved vacillating, capitulationist, and only looking out for the selfish interests of its landlord, local ruling class. They surrendered the struggle for independence but the masses did not.

As soon as the US invaded and ruled the Philippines, it molded the country’s economy to its needs–raw materials, market of surplus, gateway to Asia especially China. It imposed its colonial miseducation system. It created and trained the reactionary armed forces and constabulary (same as “Vietnamization” during the Vietnam war). It honored and awarded collaborators, led by the capitulationist and elite “leaders” or dealers of Katipunan and 1898 revolution, through lucrative positions in puppet government and business deals in the new colonial economy.

The local collaborators were used to suppress the resistance of the masses and American criticisms of the war. They misrepresented the intent of the US to exploit and invade through its programs (e.g. road building to reach mines and plantations, to bring troops faster to insurgent areas, teach English as mode of instruction to develop new tastes, colonial culture and market) as examples of “altruism” from a colonial ruler. And, for so-called normalcy and peace and order, they also brutally and insidiously suppressed the resistance of the people.

They used methods such as banning the display of Philippine flag (Flag Law 1907-1919), imposing death penalty to advocates of independence even by peaceful means (Sedition Law 1901), jailing nationalist writers and critics such as Aurelio Tolentino who staged a play depicting a victorious group of armed guerillas, and misrepresenting or vilifying guerilla resistance (Brigandage Act 1902).

Today’s red-tagging was preceded by the US branding of Filipino revolutionaries in 1900s as “bandits or tulisanes.” US forces cemented alliances with local elite by giving them power to execute “hamletting” to capture guerillas (Reconcentration Act 1903), resulting in jampacked jails and high mortality rate of prisoners.

The laid down policies, profits and experiences earned by US imperialists in its first colonization and expansion propelled it to greater imperial reach, hegemonic status and more wars of aggression. The strategic importance of US aggression in the Philippines resulted to the eventual rise to US presidency of William Howard Taft, the former Secretary of War and governor general who steered the imperialist acquisition of the Philippines.

Dragging, abandoning Filipinos to inter-imperialist war, then coming back [“I shall return”] as a neo-colonizer

World War II wreaked heavy losses on the Filipino people. It was an inter-imperialist war where the Philippines, a US colony, was targeted and colonized by Japan. The US retreated using Filipino soldiers as meat shields in escaping via Bataan in Central Luzon. In their absence, it was the Hukbo ng Bayan laban sa Hapon or Hukbalahap who waged a fierce guerrilla warfare against the Japanese.

When the imperialist US returned “as promised,” and to bring Japanese power to its knees, it rained much too much bombs, destroying infrastructure and further bankrupting the country. As the Philippines was heavily damaged, the US secured an opening to remain as its neocolonial master. At the end of World War 2, the imperialists settled a redivision of territories, but contending with another victorious Communist Party in China that succeeded in its people’s war to liberate China from foreign and capitalist oppressors.

US feared the communist influence and intensifying liberation movements around the globe. In the Philippines the cry for independence remained and to placate the Filipino people, the US favored neocolonialism than direct colonialism. The Philippines was granted “independence” but the US maintained its stranglehold through unequal treaties such as the Mutual Defense Treaty and Military Bases Agreement.

That independence was a hard-won victory by the Filipino people who had first succeeded but were robbed of it 50 years earlier. This time, the imperialist US can only “respect” that independence by keeping up with appearances. In reality, it continued slapping all its imperialist demands on the country’s people and resources via its trained and controlled armed forces and puppet government.

Using Ph as second front of the US-led “war on terrror”

Following the shocking attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, imperialist US latched on to a new justification for continuing its wars of aggression and intervention in other countries.

Because it couldn’t continue hyping an anti-communist hysteria after former communist China joined the ranks of capitalists and had trade and investment deals with the US, the latter demonized as “terrorists” and “rouges” its targets among its rivals and other independent nations it wished to control for resources and geopolitical reasons.

In the mold of communist hysteria whipped up during the 50s to galvanize support for US wars of aggression and Cold War against the then communist states of China and Russia, the “war on terror” relied on tagging and demonizing US targets. It didn’t stop even in the face of protests from the United Nations nor persistent demands of the people for proven basis and evidences for launching wars.

The war on terror led the rulers of other countries in enacting anti-terror laws with very broad definition of terrorism, in effect maligning and targeting the democratic protesters, critics, liberation movements, and revolutionary forces.

The Philippines was designated as the “second front” in the US-led “war on terror.” This war was supported by puppet Philippine presidents from Gloria Arroyo to present. They tried to enact an Anti-Terror Law and succeeded only under the Aquino 2 regime, but they were dissatisfied with the safeguards for human rights in the law that under the US-Duterte regime, they railroaded a more sinister Anti-Terror Act during the lockdowns of COVID-19 pandemic.

The imperialist US-led “war on terror” is unleashed also in the Philippines. The reactionary puppet governments from Arroyo to Marcos 2 have used the language of “war on terror” to whitewash their brutal, dirty war against the Filipino people and the national democratic revolutionaries. True to the brutal heavy-handed pattern of war laid down by imperialist US at its first foray in the Philippines, the war called “counter-insurgency” by its puppet regimes have meant bombings and artillery shelling of rural communities, “focused military operations” that do not distinguish between civilian and combatant targets, killings of armed revolutionaries, hors d combats and unarmed activists to create a false picture that their “war on terror” is winning. On the contrary the masses are seeing them more clearly as, in fact, the actual terrorists and enemies of the people.

Dragging Ph into the looming proxy war between US and China

By dint of the people’s clamor, the puppet Philippine government would sometimes be prodded to take action to defend Philippine sovereignty on its territories in the South China Sea. This included the case it filed under the United Nations Convention in the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS) that succeeded in establishing the country’s territorial maritime claims.

The tensions in the West Philippine Sea have been the latest justification by imperialist US and puppet Philippine presidents in welcoming more US troops and building US military bases and facilities despite its own reactionary Constitution’s ban on it. The US not only bound the Philippines as a so-called “treaty ally” (under Mutual Defense Treaty of 1950s) but also included the Philippines in the 18 countries it designated as a “major non-NATO ally”. By US definition, such an ally, though not a part of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), has a deep strategic and security partnership with US. Such an ally can get loans of materials and equipment for research, development and testing, enter formal agreement with the US defense department to carry out such research and development projects, even purchase depleted uranium ammunition. In short, it reads like what a US extended territory is good for. Worse for the Filipino people, the US can place their war reserve stockpiles on countries it designated as major non-NATO ally.

Yet, for all its crows over defending the allies and Philippine sovereignty, over the years the fisherfolk have been raising the alarm over China’s massive reclamation and eventual military base-building on waters and islets within the Philippine territory.

Still, the Philippine reactionary military and navy have only used this to justify calls for more budget to finance the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ “modernization,” and under Marcos 2, to increase the number of “agreed locations” of US military bases. Amid push from the people to actually defend the territory, the reactionary AFP has been responding only with promises to patrol, to increase the patrolling and patrol for what it calls as “minimum credible defense posture.”

Recently though, as the US-China collusion and competition grow sharper, the US has become more driven on expanding the reach of its war machines and aggression in Asia. With its increasingly frequent and larger war games and bases in the Philippines, it is further grooming its puppet government and controlled reactionary troops to be in position for US use should it launch war against China in Taiwan.

This is a war at the expense of the Filipino people because not only will it drag the nation to a war because of the US, the US has been more strenuously pushing and propping the local reactionary Armed Forces of the Philippines to crush the forces of the Philippine national democratic revolution. At present, it is the national democratic forces who are the biggest stumbling block to the imperialist US and its puppet government in freely exploiting the people and resources of the Philippines. If it wants to use the AFP for a proxy war with China in Taiwan, it wants to maintain the Philippines as its territory, through its puppet, and as such, it seeks the more vicious “counterinsurgency” operations against the revolutionaries to remove the forces calling for genuine liberation and sovereignty of the Philippines. For this, the imperialist US is utterly not a friend but a vicious enemy of the Filipino people.

These are some flashpoints in Philippine history where the US starkly showed that it is very very far from being a friend or an ally of the Filipino people. On the contrary, in every flashpoint, the US worked to disadvantage the people. It robbed the victories the people won in their struggle. It used the Filipinos and their resources for their narrow ends, unleashing disasters, poverty, persistent hunger and crises. The Filipino people have every reason to dissociate from and repel the imperialist US, starting with its puppet government and reactionary troops. The Filipino people has every reason and right to cherish, establish, and expand their genuine democratic government in the countryside, through their continuing support of the New People’s Army that is continuing the national democratic revolution began by their ancestors in Katipunan of 1890s. ### (Pinky Ang)

Imperialist U.S. Heightens Intervention, Dirty War in the Philippines

Published on September 23, 2023 in Countercurrent

In a recent collated report, the Philippine Revolution Web Central traced a disturbing modus operandi of the Armed Forces of the Philippines—that of conducting summary execution of captured combatants or hors de combat of the New People’s Army (NPA), in violation of international war protocols. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has been killing in brutal rubouts senior or veteran revolutionaries aged 60 and up, captured Red fighters, unarmed peace consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), and abducted civilians who were suspected to have connections with the revolutionary movement.

The AFP and its paramilitary groups have strafed and bombed civilian communities, hamletted if not encamped in civilian communities, threatened residents by their presence, corrupted minors and women, forcibly held “meetings” and ordered people to present themselves to the military to “clear” their names and be “informed” on the activities of the revolutionaries. While doing these, the AFP attached fabricated stories of armed encounters or “pursuit operations,” fake surrender, and various labels slandering the revolutionaries to spread disinformation.

Although the reactionary government through the AFP and the national police are the main implementers of various “counterinsurgency” Oplans, the justification and guide on “counterinsurgency” and “anti-terrorism”, the supplies of arms, equipment, and intelligence, the myriad of cooperation and trainings for “interoperability” of US and Philippine troops are all from the imperialist US. That a foreign power is directly arming and instigating the local reactionary government of a sovereign country to shoot, kill, and maim the Filipino people is actually done openly. And they euphemistically call the master-puppet setup as a “treaty partnership,” or a relationship of “treaty allies.”

History shows the U.S. imperialist through military aid and cooperation has been directly behind every thieving regime of puppet Philippine presidents, dictators and tyrants. They waged war on Philippine soil and repressed civilian dissent to defend their narrow interests—a resource-rich, strategically located neocolony.

Given the bloody history of US imperialist’s “pacification” campaign at the turn of 20th century, followed by the deceitful neocolonial control they have imposed since 1946 to placate the patriotic Filipinos, the war against today’s progressive and revolutionary Filipinos is not a throwback but an increasingly more insidious, brutal continuation of imperialist US’ bloody subjugation of peoples in these shores.

Their latest crimes and attacks on the people and their revolutionary vanguards wreaked losses to the Filipino people. Every revolutionary and supporters killed, every community bombed and threatened, represent more room for the narrow alliance of big landlords, bourgeois compradors, and monopoly corporations to continue plundering the riches of not only the Philippines but also of the neighboring countries which the imperialist US seeks to control by forward deployment in “treaty allies” such as the Philippines.

US imperialist most eager to crush national liberation movements like in Ph

Imperialist US is most interested to crush the Philippine national democratic revolution with a socialist perspective because its very existence is another threat to imperialism. When the national democratic revolution gains victory, the US imperialist risks losing a neocolony and social base of local oligarchs and puppet government, thus depriving them of a geopolitically strategic military outpost, a parrot in regional formations as ASEAN, a dumping ground for surplus products and capital, source of cheap labor and resources.

The national democratic revolution is an assertion of the Filipino people’s right to self-determination against the domination of US imperialism and towards genuine national independence.

Since 1968, the CPP-led national democratic revolution has been a threat to the US imperialist’s global cultural offensive. Because here is a self-reliant army of revolutionaries belying all the imperialists’ cunning and unfounded claims for people to rely only on individual superheroes and myths, serve only themselves and not the masses, and believe that the good old Uncle Sam’s imperialism is the end of history.

With the experiences and lessons gained by the CPP, the NPA, and the NDFP in mass work, learning from and working with the masses to change their situation, using the Marxist, Leninist and Maoist theories in revolution on the concrete conditions in the Philippines, using it to guide the Filipino revolutionaries’ war of national liberation, they are already helping other revolutionaries and liberation movements all over the world.

The imperialist US itches to shut down sources of revolutionary counter-cultures and messaging that threatens its full-spectrum dominance in economic, military, political, and cultural spheres around the world.

US “war on terror” and terrorist tagging

As Juliet de Lima, interim peace panel head for NDFP, noted in a speech on imperialist cultural offensive, since the US launched its “war on terror,” all sort of “terrorists” have appeared all over the globe. They are none other than enemies of imperialism who opposed the US push for neoliberalism (monopolies) and globalization (monopoly profit-taking). The US has arrogated to itself the self-serving task to launch war against “terrorists” wherever they are. Since then their troops and their cultural offensives have invaded countries, overthrown governments, and killed people whom they accuse of breeding, supporting or fronting for “terrorists.”

In the Philippines, then US puppet administration Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo swiftly embraced the “war on terror” through Oplan Bantay Laya I and II. The US-Arroyo regime’s bloodbath against the people—personified by the likes of notorious butcher general Jovito Palparan—justified its reign of terror by blurring the distinction between unarmed legal democratic activists and armed revolutionaries. Everyone became a target.

The US-led war against the Philippine liberation movement was continued by the next US puppet regimes. After so many years, under the cover of COVID19 pandemic, the US-Duterte regime finally managed to upgrade the fangs of the Anti-Terror Act. That was amid a harrowing war on drugs that killed tens of thousands of victims among the poor; war against the Bangsa Moro that became an excuse for pounding Marawi and imposing the first martial law after Marcos Sr; and amid a “counterinsurgency” war against revolutionaries in the countryside.

Duterte failed in his ambitions to be the first US puppet president who can sign a peace accord with the CPP, where he aimed to follow the US guide to disarm and force the revolutionaries to capitulate. He then unleashed an all-out war (not that they stopped during peace talks), but with additional vigor at being brutal and deceitful. By the time he exited Malacanang, Duterte can lay claim to the notoriety of forcing the terrorist-labeling on revolutionaries in the most abrasive, shameless and big-budgeted way through the NTF-ELCAC and so-called whole-of-nation approach.

Now his successor Marcos Jr and daughter Sara Duterte are continuing the US-instigated “counterinsurgency” war against Filipinos, following the same track that failed.

The official website of US Defence Department in September 2022 did not even hide it, saying “The United States and the Philippines have a robust (underscoring ours) counterterrorism program. The United States has counterinsurgency efforts in Mindanao, the country’s largest island, since 2000.”

Current US President Joe Biden said in Fact Sheet: Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States that they are extending and modernizing their “defense presence” and enhancing their capabilities (in the Philippines) to defend their interest and to deter aggression against U.S. territory and against their allies and partners (underscoring ours).

IBON Foundation cited the Philippines as the biggest recipient of US military aid among Southeast Asian countries, with an average of U$ 54 million annually since 2019, mostly military equipment.

The military equipment will make the AFP “more capacitated,” the Philippine News Agency quoted Gen. Cirilito Sobejana when he received the equipment from US. Every year, the US forces and reactionary Philippine troops conduct 300 military exercises, thus helping them gain interoperability, make the local reactionary troops “capacitated” to use surplus US equipment, among others.

All these US imperialist contributions strengthen the local reactionary troops and embolden the puppet government, at the expense of the people and their human rights.

The long-term effects of the intensifying US-instigated “counterinsurgency” war include not just the growing list of gross abuses and violations of human rights and international humanitarian law with utter impunity. It also includes the obstacles generated by relentless cultural offensives against the revolutionaries raised by the psywar guide of US imperialists’ war on terror: the distribution for example of fake news to deceive the masses and mislabel the revolutionaries and liberation fighters as “terrorist.”

The masses know the opposite is true and that in words and deeds the US imperialism is the real terrorist. The progressives and revolutionary forces are challenged to develop unity, cooperation, and coordination of all peoples in the Philippines and abroad, to raise the level of struggle against imperialism and reaction, in particular against imperialist plunder and war led by US and applied hook line and sinker by the puppet government currently led by Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (Pinky Ang) ###

“Back” in the Claws of the American Eagle

Published on March 22, 2018 in Editorial

Let’s start with a bit of recent history.

In the last quarter of 2001, then US President George W. Bush launched his government’s vindictive global “war on terror” directed at Al Qaeda, the jihadist group that planned and carried out the worldwide-shocking September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York. Bush called on other nation’s leaders for support, with this foreboding line: “If you’re not with me, you’re against me!”

Bush gave his war this high-minded name: “Operation Enduring Freedom.”

The only Asian head of state to publicly respond was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She lustily welcomed Bush’s designation of the Philippines as the “second front” of that war. “Oplan Enduring Freedom-Philippines (OEF-P)” opened up the country to the large-scale reentry of US troops (US Special Operations Command Pacific deployed 1,500 soldiers to support the government in fighting the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah).

Of course, US troops had been in the country since 1946 with two large bases: Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base. But in 1991 the American troops were practically ousted, after the Philippine Senate decided to end the RP-US Bases Agreement. Their comeback was facilitated by the deceitfully-crafted RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which, under new leadership, the Senate ratified in 1999.

Since January 2002, a new mode of annual joint RP-US military exercises was begun. Dubbed as Balikatan, it prescribed joint exercises in actual war zones, particularly in western Mindanao. Teams of fully-armed American soldiers, as “advisers” and “trainers,” accompanied Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) troops in combat operations mainly against the Abu Sayyaf.

A full-scale war to wipe out the Abu Sayyaf was subsequently planned. The US set up an all-American Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF) inside a Philippine base in Zamboanga City. Batches of US troops, 600 per, were deployed on rotating tours of duty such that, at any one time, there were that number of US soldiers in the country.

That arrangement ended in February 2015. The US removed its JSOTF in the wake of the botched anti-terrorist operation, involving US military assistance, which ended up in the Mamasapano massacre of 44 officials and men of the PNP Special Action Force. But the 14-year drive to wipe out the Abu Sayyaf failed.

Fast forward to 2017.

On September 1 last year, US Defense Secretary James Mattis designated—in total secrecy both in the US and the Philippines—“Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines”(OPE-P) as the Trump administration’s “overseas contingency operation” in Southeast Asia. Unlike in 2001, when Bush and Arroyo went high profile, this time Donald Trump was silent. So was Rodrigo Duterte.

As detailed in a quarterly report to the US Congress by the US Lead Inspector General, Glenn A. Fine, (dated Oct. 1-Dec. 31, 2017), what Mattis officially launched was a bilateral comprehensive campaign “to assist the (AFP) in their effort to isolate, degrade, and defeat affiliates of the Islamic State (of Iraq and Syria) and other terrorist organizations that do not profess a connection to ISIS (emphasis ours).”

(This editorial’s title uses the word “back” to reflect Duterte’s abandonment of his erstwhile public stance to “move away from the US.” In his speech in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2016, he reiterated that he would abrogate executive agreements with the US, if necessary, to pursue an independent foreign policy. He said: “I want, in the next two years, my country free from the presence of foreign military troops. The Philippines can live without the assistance of the US…”).

OPE-P is fully funded by the US. In 2017, the US Department of Defense (DoD) provided US$16 million from its Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Fund. Its 2018 and 2019 budgets have not yet been determined, pending completion of the funding requirements being identified by the DoD, the Pacific Area Command (PACOM), and US military departments concerned.

It has no termination period. It will end, says the report, “when the AFP no longer requires US military assistance to address its internal terrorist threat.” Given the persistence of the Abu Sayyaf, the Maute group, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters—much more, of the New People’s Army (in irrational anger in December, Duterte declared the NPA as a “terrorist organization” along with the Communist Party of the Philippines)—when can the AFP say it no longer need US aid?

The report points out that, “as with all US military operations in the Philipines, OPE-P is conducted at the request of the Philippine government.” US and Philippine military leaders, it adds, meet annually at 4-star level to discuss the scope of the coming year’s bilateral defense cooperation and training programs.

Under OPE-P, the report notes, the US special operations forces continue to be “advising and assisting the AFP.” All military operations are supposedly conducted “by, with, and through Filipino forces.” This qualification, used since the first Balikatan exercises, is intended to shield the US “advisers” and “trainers” from being called to account for human rights violations in the conduct of military operations.

Obviously sanitized, the report to the US Congress has not dwelt on the political and geopolitical implications of the OPE-P’s implementation. Let’s therefore look at some of the reactions to its launching in September.

Prof. Roland Simbulan of the University of the Philippines, who has written several books and articles about US military intervention in the country and elsewhere, said:

“(OPE-P) marks a new era of US military intervention in the Philippines. Internally, it is directed against the Philippine Left and externally, (at using) the Philippines as springboard to reassert US military power in the Pacific. It is Trump’s way of supporting the creeping authoritarianism in the country while using US military force and assets to make sure that Duterte does not change [his stand] on US military presence [in relation to China].”

Sociology Prof. William Robinson of the University of California concurred with Simbulan’s view. He backstopped it by citing historical precedents when the US used the Philippines as “principal rearguard and staging point” for its interventionist wars against North Korea (1950s) and against North Vietnam (1960s-70s). “The US military presence was also the hinge around which the counterinsurgency war was organized against the NPA in the 1970s and 1980s.”

Prof. Jose Ma. Sison, chief political consultant of the NDFP peace negotiating panel, observed:

“It is very clear to Trump that the Duterte regime is securely a puppet of US imperialism. All the major treaties, agreements and arrangements that have tied the Philippines to the US economically, politically, culturally, and militarily remain intact. Trump’s comment reflects the fact that the US dominates the Philippines as its ‘most prime real estate’ in Southeast Asia and is an important forward base of the US in the East Asia-Pacific region.”

As to the NPA’s response to OPE-P, national spokesperson Ka Oris undauntedly stated:

“Expanding the mass base, strengthening and expanding the NPA through trainings and massive recruitments, making sure the revolutionary work is done in a comprehensive manner—to ensure that the guerilla forces and bases can withstand and outlast the relentless attacks from enemy forces.”

These, Ka Oris said, must be done “alongside the strengthening and adaptation of the NPA and the people to US sophisticated weapons, such as surveillance and attack drones, that the (AFP) forces are already using against civilian communities.”�Last words from Prof. Sison:

“It would be politically and financially costly, at the expense of the people, if the Duterte regime relies solely on its ‘all-out-war’ policy, Oplan Kapayapaan and Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines and tries to bribe the AFP, PNP and paramilitaries to go on a rampage of mass murder with P25,000 for the killing of every suspected or maliciously listed ‘NPA member.’ ”

Let’s follow through how this revived US imperialist “contingency operation” will proceed, and be militantly ready to expose and oppose every anti-people project it will launch.

You might be interested in

You might be interested in

You might be interested in