|
|
| |
REALPOLITIK OF BUSH'S
REVOLUTION
Part 1:
The Philippines revisited
By Henry C
K Liu
On November
6, addressing the National Endowment for Democracy, a
neo-conservative organization founded during the Reagan
era, US President George W Bush sought to justify the
predictably endless and unsustainably high cost in lives
and money of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Bush set out the argument for America's war against Iraq
no longer in terms of 
defense against a threat to US security, but as
part of a proactive "global democratic revolution". Even
if no weapons of mass destruction can be found in Iraq
despite an exhaustive search, the blood and money Bush
is expending in that troubled land is now justified by
the noble-sounding aim of promoting Arab democracy.
The president was speaking in Washington on a
theme that freedom is "worth dying for" at the same time
that a memorial service was being held in Iraq for the
15 US soldiers killed in a Chinook helicopter shot down
by guerrilla fighters four days earlier. The first half
of this month saw 44 US occupation soldiers killed by
hostile fire from unidentified sources in Iraq. As of
last Friday, some 9,200 US soldiers had been wounded
since the war started in April, with the bulk injured by
guerrilla forces or evacuated for non-combat medical
reasons associated with occupation after the war
formally ended.
While ignoring press inquiries
on why he has thus far avoided attending any funerals
for soldiers killed in action, Bush predicted that
successfully implanting a democratic government in Iraq
would energize a democratic revolution that would sweep
away alleged tyrannies from Cuba to North Korea.
Specifically, Bush proclaimed a new "forward strategy"
for advancing freedom in the Middle East, declaring that
six decades of excusing and accommodating dictatorships
there on the part of the United States "did nothing to
make us safe, because stability cannot be purchased at
liberty's expense".
Bush acknowledged that the
United States has historically failed to support
overseas the values that it claims to uphold at home.
Yet the "war on terrorism" now threatens those same
values even at home, as former vice president Al Gore
pointed out in Constitution Hall in Washington on
November 9, three days after Bush's speech.
Gore
said: "In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to
launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way
to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion
of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama bin Laden. In
both cases, the administration has attacked the wrong
target. In both cases, they have recklessly put our
country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding
and neglecting obvious and much more important
challenges that would actually help to protect the
country. In both cases, the administration has fostered
false impressions and misled the nation with
superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations
that are not worthy of American democracy. In both
cases, they have exploited public fears for partisan
political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders
of our country while actually weakening, not
strengthening, America. In both cases, they have used
unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid
accountability to the Congress, the courts, the press
and the people.
"Indeed, this administration has
turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on
its head. A government of and for the people is supposed
to be generally open to public scrutiny by the people -
while the private information of the people themselves
should be routinely protected from government intrusion.
But instead this administration is seeking to conduct
its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered
access to personal information about American citizens.
Under the rubric of protecting national security, they
have obtained new powers to gather information from
citizens and to keep it secret. Yet at the same time
they themselves refuse to disclose information that is
highly relevant to the war against terrorism."
Gore went on to cite specific cases of abuse of
the rights of US citizens: "In an even more brazen move,
more than two years after they rounded up over 1,200
individuals of Arab descent, they still refuse to
release the names of the individuals they detained, even
though virtually every one of those arrested has been
'cleared' by the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]
of any connection to terrorism and there is absolutely
no national security justification for keeping the names
secret. Yet at the same time, White House officials
themselves leaked the name of a CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency] operative serving the country, in
clear violation of the law, in an effort to get at her
husband, who had angered them by disclosing that the
president had relied on forged evidence in his State of
the Union address as part of his effort to convince the
country that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of building
nuclear weapons. And even as they claim the right to see
the private bank records of every American, they are
adopting a new policy on the Freedom of Information Act
that actively encourages federal agencies to fully
consider all potential reasons for non-disclosure
regardless of whether the disclosure would be harmful.
In other words, the federal government will now actively
resist complying with any request for
information." Gore pointed out that since the Bush
administration has warned that the war on terrorism will
last a lifetime, it follows that the suspension of civil
liberties in the United States will be permanent.
Bush acknowledged that putting realpolitik ahead
of freedom in the past has backfired. Yet it is doubtful
that a preference for realpolitik is the sole cause of
the current anti-US rage in the region and indeed
worldwide. The detente policy of the late president
Richard Nixon, a modern master of realpolitik, elevated
the international image of the United States as a leader
for world peace, mostly a result of his historic opening
to China, a communist state. The problem was not
realpolitik, but realpolitik in support of bogus
democratic claims.
The main part of the blame
for the recent rise of post-Cold War global antagonism
toward the US has to go to neo-liberalism, which,
through unregulated markets, has made a few select
elites around the world rich, but left the masses in
dire poverty and hopeless desperation, thus providing a
fertile breeding ground for terrorism not just against
the United States, but against many of its allies.
Economic democracy has not been part of the values of
the US democratic system in the past decade, if ever, as
the disparity of wealth and income not only widened but
was condoned by policy and ideology both at home and
abroad. It is true that political terrorists tend to
come from the well-educated middle class, not quite
indigent members of society. But that is because of the
poor lack the education, the wherewithal and, above all,
the political consciousness to understand the
geopolitical causes of their plight. It falls upon the
educated among the exploited to develop the political
consciousness, the intellectual awareness and the
personal courage to make the supreme sacrifice in the
struggle for national liberation. American terrorists
against British tyranny before the War of Independence
were no exception.
Bush is not the first
president to promise to put democracy at the forefront
of US policy. He cited Woodrow Wilson, who put forth his
idealistic Fourteen Points proposal to a skeptical,
war-torn Europe, but failed to save the world from
another World War within a couple of decades. He also
cited Franklin D Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, annunciated
in a January 6, 1941, message to Congress proposing
lend-lease legislation to support war allies. The Four
Freedoms (of speech, of worship, from want and from
fear), FDR proclaimed, should prevail everywhere in the
world, but they were largely sidetracked by the postwar
US fixation on anti-communism, particularly freedom from
want.
Freedom of association has not always been
an American heritage. The Alien and Registration Act of
1940 proposed by congressman Howard Smith of Virginia,
generally referred to as the Smith Act, was signed into
law by FDR on June 28, 1940, 16 months before the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was the
first statute since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798
to make the mere advocacy of ideas a federal crime. So
much for freedom of speech and freedom from fear in the
Land of the Free.
FBI director J Edgar Hoover,
proud of his leading role in the government's nationwide
persecution and deportation of political radicals and
left-inclined immigrants during the 1919 Palmer Raids,
suggested to president Harry Truman in 1948 that the
Smith Act be used against the US Communist Party and its
sympathizers. Truman embraced the idea as a way to
outflank Republican rivals who were accusing the
Democrats of being "soft" on communism. Going after
domestic communists also complemented Truman's
international policy in subduing "subversion" in Greece,
Italy and France, where communism was popular and
Communist parties could conceivably win elections and
share or take total control of national governments
outside of the Soviet bloc through democratic means.
The Smith Act trials of the 1950s, the most
significant political-heresy trials in US history,
brought Cold War hysterics into US domestic politics.
The 11 defendants were not charged with any overt acts,
only that "they conspired ... to organize as the
Communist Party and willfully to advocate and teach the
principles of Marxism-Leninism", which the government
alleged to mean "overthrowing and destroying the
government of the United States by force and violence"
at some unspecified future time. The defendants were
also accused of conspiring to "publish and circulate ...
books, articles, magazines and newspapers advocating the
principles of Marxism-Leninism". The Manifesto of the
Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
Lenin's State and Revolution, and Joseph Stalin's
Foundation of Leninism were placed into evidence
as books from which the defendants taught, which the
prosecution, the judge and the jury all concluded to be
criminal acts.
The defendants fought the
thought-crime nature of the proceedings, claiming, to no
avail, that they were for majority rule and against
violence, except as a method of self-defense. They
pointed out that Marxism-Leninism sees the collapse of
capitalism as a dialectic inevitability of the inherent
contradictions of capitalism, that revolution was only
necessary when reactionary oppression of workers was
unleashed against the tide of history by governments
undemocratically captured by capitalist interests.
Given the climate of hysteria generated by
controlled mass media, guilty verdicts for all were
foreordained. Ten were sentenced to and served five
years in federal prison as political prisoners in all
but name, and had to also pay fines of US$10,000 each.
The 11th defendant, Robert G Thompson, a bearer of the
World War II Distinguished Service Cross for bravery,
received his government's gratitude in the form of a
slightly shorter sentence of only three years. While in
prison, Thompson had his skull crushed by a group of
Yugoslav fascists armed with a pipe, and another
defendant, Harry Winston, denied essential medical care
in prison, was left blinded. As if that were not enough,
each of the defense lawyers was cited for contempt by
the biased judge and had to serve a prison sentence.
Among those who served six months was George C Crockett,
a black lawyer who, later in his career, was elected as
a judge in Detroit's criminal court and then as a
Michigan congressman.
The convicted communists
appealed their cases but, in 1951, the United States
Supreme Court upheld the convictions by a vote of six
(including four Truman appointees) to two. Chief justice
Fred Vinson wrote the decision for the majority.
Justices Hugo Black and William O Douglas dissented.
Black noted that the government indictment was "a
virulent form of prior censorship of speech and press",
which is forbidden by the First Amendment and therefore
unconstitutional. Douglas wrote of his belief that the
Communist Party could not possibly represent a "clear
and present danger" as required in the law to qualify as
an outlawed organization. A true defender of democracy,
he made clear the distinction between defending the
party's legal rights and supporting its ideology.
Unlike George W Bush, Woodrow Wilson did not try
to impose his version of democracy with smart bombs and
cruise missiles, nor with invasions and occupation of
small nations, or dead-or-alive cash bounties for enemy
leaders. Still, the idealist Wilson did remain silent
about US occupation of the Philippines, Hawaii and
Puerto Rico, in clear violation of one of his Fourteen
Points, the right of self-determination for colonies.
FDR stood for the dismantling of European imperialism
and for global decolonization, but deferred to Winston
Churchill, who insisted that Britain did not fight the
war to give up the empire and who found the perfect
excuse for imperialism in anti-communism.
The
Philippine failure
The Philippines is a living
example of failed American democracy, which Bush
understandably did not mention in his speech on world
democratic revolution. The persecution of Muslims by
Christians has been routinely condoned throughout the
history of the Philippines and now as part of the US
"war on terrorism" in that country. In the Moro Massacre
in 1906, US troops led by General John Pershing
slaughtered some 3,000 Muslim Filipino men, women and
children on Mount Dajo during the Philippine-American
War, a war of independence and resistance against US
colonization. It was an atrocity not forgotten by
Philippine Muslims. Among those Americans outraged by
the massacre was Mark Twain, whose bitter satire about
battle-glorifying oratory, "The War Prayer", was
inspired by his opposition to US military policy. "The
wounds over the massacre of our forefathers by the
American colonializers have not been healed," said
Temojin Tulawie, leader of a new group opposing the
decision by the current Philippine President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo to bring in US troops for combat duties
against a militant faction of the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF).
The US government
during the Cold War used the threat of communism as the
pretext for tightening US hegemonic control over the
Philippines. It sent military advisers and aid to
strengthen the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and to
guarantee subservience to US economic and military
control. Today, Washington is using the "war on
terrorism" as a cover for a renewed attempt to tighten
its hegemonic control globally in the name of democracy.
It aims to re-establish US military domination of the
Philippines and to undertake military intervention in
other countries of Asia and the Middle East.
In
the southern Philippines, Muslims have been fighting
government forces for more than 30 years. While some
Mindanao Muslim leaders want a separate Islamic state,
their separatist aims have been motivated by centuries
of government exclusionary neglect, military repression
and endemic poverty. Arroyo is talking peace with the
MILF while waging war on the Abu Sayyaf, a militant
wing. In a blow to Arroyo's bid to achieve peace in
Mindanao, another Muslim rebel group, the Moro National
Liberation Front, recently staged an uprising on the
southern island of Jolo. This Muslim faction had signed
a 1996 peace pact with the Philippine government.
Militants from neighboring Indonesia and Malaysia have
also reportedly trained with the MILF. Historically, the
United States has played a controversial role in the
Philippines, where 100 years ago it waged a major war on
Mindanao Muslim freedom fighters who fiercely resisted
US colonial rule.
In the 1970s, a new generation
of Muslim freedom fighters waged war against the Marcos
regime, which received military aid from the United
States. One of the young freedom fighters was Al Haj
Murad, now commander-in-chief of the MILF. "This is a
longtime problem," Murad said from Kuala Lumpur, where
peace talks with Arroyo's government were being held.
"If we trace our history, America has played a role in
the making of this problem."
On October 18,
Bush, during a whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia, told
the Philippine Congress of this former US colony that
Iraq, like the Philippines, could be transformed into a
vibrant democracy. Bush seemed oblivious to the
possibility that the people of Iraq, like the Moro
Muslims of the Philippines, would find the avoidance of
a fate like the Philippines' worth dying for. Bush also
pledged his help in remaking the troubled and sometimes
mutinous Philippine military into a force for fighting
terrorism, not particularly a tool of democracy.
During an eight-hour visit, Bush for the first
time drew explicit comparisons between the transition he
is seeking in Iraq and the rough road to democracy that
the Philippines traveled from the time the United States
seized it from Spain in 1898 to the present day. "Some
say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the
institutions of democracy," Bush said, taking on the
critics of his goal to use Iraq as a laboratory for
spreading democratic institutions in the Middle East.
"The same doubts were once expressed about the culture
of Asia. Those doubts were proven wrong nearly six
decades ago." Few who are familiar with the history of
Asia have any idea what Bush was referring to.
David E Sanger, reporting in the New York Times,
wrote: "While the administration often speaks of the
occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II as
rough models for the effort to rebuild Iraq, Mr Bush
used the visit to the former US colony to make a less
explicit analogy to the American administration of the
Philippines, which also led to the formation of a
democracy. But the comparison has less power to
reassure, given that the Philippine government did not
gain full autonomy for five decades.
"Aides
traveling with Mr Bush made it clear that he was worried
about the stability of the Philippines. After meeting
with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her cabinet
shortly after he landed, Mr Bush announced that the two
governments had formalized a five-year plan 'to
modernize and reform' the Philippine military, although
his aides said it was unclear how much of the cost the
United States would contribute. 'The numbers are still
in flux,' a senior administration official told
reporters, adding that the administration was still
looking for roughly $20 million to provide the
Philippines with used US military helicopters that Mr
Bush promised a year ago to help root out Abu Sayyaf,
the group that the US strongly suspected of being linked
to al-Qaeda. The announcement was part of a broad plan
to provide help to the Philippine military, which Mr
Bush sees as the best hope of preventing the Philippines
from becoming a terrorist haven."
Since Bush
apparently thinks the Philippines already enjoys
democracy, it begs the question why terrorism continues
to flourish in a democracy and by extension, how a
"world democratic revolution" would end terrorism.
Sanger continued: "The White House and
Philippine officials made much of the fact that Mr Bush
was the first president to address a joint session of
the Philippine Congress since Dwight D Eisenhower came
here in 1960, at the very end of his presidency. But in
a taste of the anger that Mr Bush has generated around
the world, several thousand protesters filled the
streets near the Philippine Congress and forced an
hour-long delay in the arrival of the president's
motorcade while the Secret Service assessed whether it
was safe to move him through the streets ...
"The extraordinary security around Mr Bush's
visit here underscored Washington's continuing concerns
about the stability of the Philippines. Mr Bush flew in
with American F-15s off the wings of Air Force One. The
Secret Service would not permit Mr Bush to stay
overnight." Attending a state dinner at Malacanang
Palace, "Bush used his toast to salute the Philippines
as 'the oldest democracy in Asia', and to recall that
17,000 US soldiers are buried here, having fallen in
bitter combat with the Japanese during World War II."
The instability of the Philippines as the oldest
democracy in Asia and 17,000 US deaths are sobering
thoughts for his world democratic revolution.
There was no indication that talks between the
two leaders touched on the ban by the Philippine
constitution against foreign troops engaging in combat
on Philippine soil. The Pentagon had announced nine
months earlier, on February 20, that the United States
would send 1,700 more troops to the Philippines to fight
Muslim extremists in the southern part of the country,
opening yet another new front in the "war on terrorism".
A six-month training mission in the Philippines in 2002
was limited to 1,300 US troops, including 160 Special
Forces soldiers, to an advisory role and permitted them
to fire only in self-defense in the rare cases when they
accompanied Philippine soldiers. But this new mission
would be a combat operation with no such restrictions on
US and Philippine troops serving side by side. Under the
plan, about 750 ground troops, including 350
special-operations forces, would conduct or support
combat patrols in the rugged jungles of Sulu province.
In addition, about 1,000 marines, armed with Cobra
attack helicopters and Harrier AV-8B attack planes,
would stand ready aboard two ships offshore to act as a
quick-response force and provide logistics and medical
support.
The operation would last as long as
necessary "to disrupt and destroy" the estimated 250
members of the extremist Abu Sayyaf group, a Pentagon
official said in February, and would mark a sharp
escalation in the "war on terror", as the United States
was then building up for an imminent war against Iraq
while continuing to hunt al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Negotiations between the two countries have been under
way for months, but Abu Sayyaf's repeated attacks and
the bombing death of an American Green Beret in October
spurred Arroyo and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
to hammer out an aggressive plan in short order.
Dispatching US commandos to the jungles of the
southern Philippines came at a convenient moment for
Pentagon officials, who had sought to show that the US
military could fight a war with Iraq and still carry out
a global hunt for terrorists. The ratio of 3,000 US
troops to root out a guerrilla force of 250 comes to
12:1, still inadequately low by conventional military
standards on counter-guerrilla warfare. Arroyo has
walked a political tightrope at home on the sensitive
issue of welcoming US military help to defeat a deadly
political foe, but careful not to aggravate domestic
tensions tied to America's role as a former colonial
ruler consumed with intense racism and religious
intolerance.
By March, the plan to send 3,000 US
troops to the Philippines to track down Muslim
guerrillas was left in limbo after military leaders from
both countries failed to find a way to reconcile
Philippine constitutional law with the prospect of US
combat operations in the island nation. Speaking after
talks with his Philippine counterpart, Rumsfeld told the
press that both countries remained interested in
arranging for expanded US military assistance to
Philippine forces combating the Abu Sayyaf group. But he
offered no estimate of the size, timing or exact purpose
of any US force that might eventually be dispatched.
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, who appeared beside Rumsfeld at the Pentagon news
conference, said the commander of US forces in the
Pacific had been asked to prepare other options that
would be more in accordance with the Philippine
constitution, which prohibits combat activities by
foreign troops except in self-defense. The freezing of
the original plan, only a week after a Pentagon
spokesman had detailed it to journalists, was an
embarrassment for Manila and Washington and a setback
for the Bush administration's effort to widen its global
war on terrorism. Philippine Defense Minister Angelo
Reyes, at a separate news conference, described the
basic problem as essentially "one of definitions and
semantics". It is also the basic problem of Bush's world
democratic revolution.
The negotiations about
the role of US troops came amid renewed violence on the
main southern island of Mindanao, where government
troops earlier in the year overran a stronghold of the
larger Muslim separatist group, the MILF. The guerrillas
responded with bombings and stepped-up attacks on
military and civilian targets. In March, a bomb blast at
Davao airport killed 21 people, including an American
missionary, and injured more than 100 others. The
government blamed the MILF, which denied involvement. A
day before, suspected MILF rebels seized a bus near
Pikit town, 925 kilometers southeast of Manila, and held
40 passengers hostage before fleeing, leaving one
soldier and a government militiaman dead.
The
Philippine Hukbalahap movement, known simply as the Huk,
was the culmination of internal Philippine conditions
rooted in the country's pre-colonial period. Economic,
social and political inequities existed before the
arrival of the Spanish in 1521, whose aversion toward
modernization further coopted ancient inequities into
their own variety of mercantilism. These inequities were
perpetuated into the 20th century by US policy, which
added racism to economic oppression. This social and
political history divided the Philippines into classes
of severe disparity of wealth and opportunity, with the
majority of the population left with little but a
desperate desire for change.
In 1920, the Third
International, or Comintern, headquartered in Moscow,
met in Canton (Guangzhou), China, under the sponsorship
of the then decade-old Chinese Nationalist Republic. The
worldwide growth of interest in communism coincided with
a rising disaffection in the Philippines fanned by two
decades of oppressive US colonial policies that promised
no progressive future. Most Americans viewed the
Philippine people as virtual slaves, on the level of
blacks, who at least spoke better English. After the
Third International, an American Comintern
representative, Harrison George, joined with several
Philippine socialists to form the base for the first
Philippine communist party. In 1927, the Philippine
Labor Congress officially associated itself with the
Comintern and organized the nation's first legal
communist political party, the Worker's Party. Within
the year, Crisanto Evangelista, as head of the Worker's
Party, visited Zhou Enlai and Stalin. Upon his return to
Luzon, he organized four new socialist and communist
organizations against the colonial Manila government in
a revolutionary movement based on class struggle.
On the 34th anniversary of the 1896 Katipunan
Revolt against Spain, on August 26, 1930, Evangelista
announced the founding of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (PKP). Less than three months later, on the
13th anniversary of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, he
formally established the PKP and proclaimed its
revolutionary objectives. In his November 7, 1930,
address, he set forth five guiding principles for the
Philippine communist movement: to mobilize for complete
national independence; to establish communism for the
masses; to defend the masses against capitalist
exploitation; to overthrow US imperialism in the
Philippines; and to overthrow capitalism. In 1932, two
years after the birth of the PKP, the colonial
Philippine Supreme Court declared the PKP illegal.
Evangelista and several of his chief lieutenants were
imprisoned as political prisoners, charged with plotting
the overthrow of the colonial government and instigating
riots in Manila. Other PKP members went underground to
continue to fight against landlords on behalf of
peasants.
Although not widespread, PKP attacks
unsettled central Luzon. In reaction, president Manuel
Quezon of the colonial government instituted several
minor land-reform measures, including putting a 30
percent limit on the amount of a tenant's crop that
could be demanded by the landlord, but they were ignored
by landlords, the colonial courts and the colonial
bureaucracy.
A side-effect of the 1932 Supreme
Court decision was a dramatic rise in prestige and
membership of the heretofore weak Philippine Socialist
Party (formed in April 1932 in Pampanga) and the
militant Worker and Peasant's Union (WPU). With the PKP
in an outlaw status, the socialists and WPU became the
legal foci for many law-binding PKP supporters. Both
organizations gained considerable influence during the
next six years as poor socio-economic conditions
remained unchanged for Luzon's tenant farmers and urban
poor.
In 1934, the US Congress, controlled by
liberal New Dealers, passed Public Law 127, the
Tydings-McDuffie Act. The act, ratified in May by the
colonial Philippine Congress, promised full Philippine
independence on July 4, 1946, after 48 years of colonial
rule, and established conditions under which the islands
would be governed until that time as the Philippine
Commonwealth. In the name of freedom, the act cut
Filipino immigration to the United States to a quota of
50 persons per year, and all Filipinos in the United
States were reclassified as "aliens", instead of US
persons or subjects, including those who had served in
the US military, mostly in the navy as cooks and
servants. The US racist exclusion of Filipino
immigration was continually connected with the issue of
Philippine independence from US colonization. The United
States retained control of Philippine foreign relations,
defense, monetary policy and major financial
transactions but granted the Philippine president and
legislature the power to administer internal affairs
within the limits of US tolerance.
The
Tydings-McDuffie Act created dissension within the
colonial Philippine government, for it promised
independence at the price of formalizing colonial
economic ties with the United States for the next 12
years. Many critics in Manila, and in the growing
Communist and Socialist parties as well, objected
strongly to the near total disregard for Philippine
nationalism that these strict controls mandated. After
the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in
1935, US economic and political policy did little to
alleviate the basic Philippine problems of poverty and
land tenure.
To moderate growing incidents of
violent nationalist demonstrations in Manila in 1938,
Quezon released PKP leaders Evangelista, Luis Taruc, the
Huk supreme commander, and Isabelo de los Reyes, a PKP
founder, after they pledged loyalty to the government
and to US efforts against Japanese expansion.
Evangelista's bitter opposition to the Quezon
administration continued until 1941, when the threat of
imminent Japanese invasion brought a temporary truce and
offers from the PKP to support the Commonwealth. With
the approval of General Douglas MacArthur, commander of
US forces in the Philippines, Quezon, who trusted
neither Evangelista nor the coalition, refused the offer
and refused to negotiate any cooperative agreements with
them.
Philippine nationalism struggled for
cultural, political and economic independence after
years of colonial rule and foreign exploitation. In the
Philippines, as in most of Asia, nationalism had no
place to turn except to communism. The 1960s were the
height of a renewed nationalism in the Philippines. More
than a decade after gaining independence, many
Philippine nationalists were reexamining their country's
cultural, political and economic ties with the United
States, their former colonizer. Facts were not
supportive of US claims of freedom and democracy that
promised to bring prosperity and equality and end
racism. Attesting to these growing nationalistic
sentiments was, for example, the move of the official
date of the Philippine independence from July 4, 1946,
the day the US granted the Philippines complete
independence, to June 12, 1898, the day the Philippine
Revolutionary Government under General Emilio Aguinaldo
declared independence from Spain, the same year the US
acquired the Philippines as a colony.
The Cold
War solidified continuing US domination of the
Philippines. On September 8, 1954, the Southeast Asia
Treaty Organization (SEATO) was organized in Manila by
nine countries including the Philippines to deter
communism in the region. Growing nationalism in the
Philippines was again repressed when martial law was
declared in September 21, 1972, by Marcos. Many
Philippine nationalists, among them student activists,
who could not afford to flee into exile, took up arms
and were arrested by the Philippine Constabulary. They
were summarily branded as communists and executed. Many
others were "silenced" by wholesale violation of their
constitutional rights, such as the freedom of press, of
speech and of assembly as Marcos begun to rule by
decrees until the evening hours of February 25, 1986,
when Marcos, his wife Imelda, and their 60-member
entourage fled the grounds of the presidential palace in
Manila for exile in Hawaii.
The United States
supported the Marcos regime, which lasted for 15 years,
to combat the threat of communism in the Philippines and
Southeast Asia and to secure US military presence in the
region with military bases in the Philippines to
maintain strategic advantages during the Vietnam War, as
well as throughout the Cold War. Persistent Philippine
nationalism finally forced the removal of US bases in
1992.
Two parties are better than
one
The first Communist Party of the Philippines
(CPP) was formed in 1930 under the leadership of
Crisanto Evangelista, a radical labor leader. This party
was inspired by Soviet communism and it aimed to
establish a Soviet-type government in the Philippines.
The party was outlawed in 1932 but legalized by
president Manuel Quezon in 1937 during the Commonwealth
Period under the liberal Roosevelt administration.
Having acquired legal status, the CPP decided to
participate in Commonwealth elections. In 1938, it
merged with the Socialist Party of Pedro Abad Santos.
The Socialist Party was also instrumental in the
formation of the Popular Front, which participated in
the congressional and local elections during the
Commonwealth Period. During Japanese occupation, the
Communist Party, the merger of the Communist and
Socialist parties, went underground to fight the
Japanese imperial forces after the imperious US
Lieutenant-General Douglas MacArthur fled to Australia,
leaving Lieutenant-General Jonathan Wainwright to
surrender a combined US and Philippine force of 145,000
soldiers to the Japanese, despite MacArthur's parting
order to hold at all cost. Some 16,000 US soldiers were
taken as prisoners by the Japanese.
MacArthur,
as head of the US military mission to the Philippines
and field marshal of the Philippine Commonwealth Army
since 1935, was responsible for the establishment of an
effective training and defense plan, which even after
five years of preparation, with a combined force of
145,000 under his command, failed to foil the Japanese
invasion. MacArthur had badly underestimated Japanese
capabilities and intentions. Yet, unlike the army and
navy commanders at Pearl Harbor who were caught off
guard and subsequently faced accusation of derelict of
duty, MacArthur was not cashiered. Instead, his image
took on heroic dimensions in the American public eye,
made famous by his public vow: "I shall return."
In truth, MacArthur had mishandled the defense
of the Philippines against the invasion, opting to meet
Japanese amphibious assaults on the beaches, despite the
grave qualitative deficiencies of the new Philippine
army he was responsible for training and despite the
decimation of his air force on the ground by Japanese
bombers in the first three days of the campaign. The
result was a military debacle.
MacArthur ordered
a fallback of his battered troops to Bataan, abandoning
supplies allocated forward, thus foreclosing any chance
of a prolonged defense. The Japanese attack on the
Philippines occurred nine hours after their attack on
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Despite that nine-hour
warning of the outbreak of hostilities with Japan,
MacArthur was paralyzed by indecision during these
crucial hours and failed to bring his forces to a state
of readiness to meet an imminent Japanese attack.
MacArthur's indecision, combined with poor military
judgment and the slackness in his command structure, led
to the destruction of half of his air force of 277
aircraft on the ground (the air force in Hawaii had 231
aircraft on December 1, 1941, one week before the
Japanese attack) and his troops being denied adequate
supplies to withstand a lengthy siege. One squadron of
fighter planes, ordered to relocate to a secret airbase
safe from Japanese attack, could not find their
well-camouflaged destination, and had to return to their
exposed old base. With the US surrender, the resistance
fell entirely on the shoulders of the Philippine
communists.
The Communist Party formed a
military arm known by the historical name of Hukakahap,
which kept up the resistance throughout Japanese
occupation and contributed significantly to the
successful return of the United States in 1944, with a
force larger than any in the European theater except the
Normandy invasion's Operation Overlord. The Japanese
defense of the Philippines cost its army 500,000 deaths.
MacArthur, whose anti-communism fervor was
legendary, acknowledged the courageous war efforts of
the Philippine communists and awarded many of them
medals of honors. After the war, the Huks participated
in the formation of the independence government in 1946,
and participated in the election. Its winning
candidates, however, were not allowed seats in the
legislature because they were communists. Hence, the
Huks resumed their armed struggle and renamed themselves
the HMB (Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan). During the
administration of president Elpidio Quirino, the Huks
were granted amnesty and Luis Taruc, the Huk leader,
pledged loyalty to the Philippine government. But the
amnesty program was not honored and the Huks returned to
the mountains to wage armed struggle.
During the
administration of president Ramon Magsaysay, the
government conducted a vigorous campaign against the
Huks and sent reporter Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino as a
special emissary to negotiate for an amnesty for Taruc
on February 17, 1954. The task launched Aquino's
political career, which ended with his assassination on
August 21, 1983, on the plane on which he was returning
from exile, in full view of world television. His
window, Corazon, assumed the presidency on February 25,
1986.
CCP secretary general Jesus Lava was
arrested on May 21, 1964, during the administration of
president Diosdado Macapagal. On September 11, 1968,
Taruc was given executive clemency by the administration
of president Ferdinand Marcos on the request of
publisher Joaquin Roces of the Manila Times. During this
period, the CPP internal ideological struggle reached
its height. Jose Sison, leader of the Kabanataang
Makabayan and a very active youth cadre of the old CPP,
re-established the Communist Party of the Philippines
following Maoist ideology.
The re-established
CPP was launched on December 26, 1968, coinciding with
the 75th birth anniversary of Mao Zedong. The new party
used Maoist thought in analyzing the "chronic crisis"
besetting Philippine society. Thus, two communist
parties existed in the Philippines in the late 1960s,
namely: the old Communist Party of Lava and Taruc and
the new Communist Party of Sison. The former was a
Soviet-inspired communist party while the latter was
Maoist-inspired. Both claimed to uphold the ideology of
Marxism-Leninist thought, with the new CPP adding Maoism
as a central ideology.
The new CPP campaigned
against Marcos' decision to send troops to Vietnam. It
also campaigned against US intervention in Philippine
politics and condemned landlord domination of the
Philippine economy. Cynical of legal political processes
out of experience, the new CPP waged an armed struggle
against the dictatorial Marcos government. It was during
the Marcos period that the membership of the new CPP
started to increase, usually coming from university
students and young professors. On March 29, 1969, the
new CPP founded its military arm, the New People's Army
(NPA). The NPA was headed by a former Huk commander in
Central Luzon, Dante Buscayno. Of peasant origin,
Buscayno was encouraged by Sison to head the NPA in its
struggle against US imperialism, feudalism and
bureaucratic capitalism. The NPA was able to strengthen
its numbers by recruiting many peasant guerrillas in the
countryside. The CPP and NPA worked together for the
establishment of their vision: a national democratic
government in the Philippines, which would serve as a
transition stage toward socialism, much to the
apprehension of the United States.
When Marcos
declared martial law in 1972, he outlawed the CPP-NPA
and conducted vigorous counterinsurgency operations
against its members and sympathizers. Marcos banned
student organizations and suspended the operation of
student councils and publications in universities.
Marcos also closed major radio and television stations
and incarcerated many of his political rivals. He
suppressed all political parties and suspended the
holding of elections. Marcos' declaration of martial law
was viewed by opposition forces as the "reign of terror"
in the country's history.
Marcos signed the
proclamation placing the Philippines under martial law
on September 21, 1972. Under martial law, Marcos
campaigned for his vision of a "New Philippine Society".
Marcos consolidated his power by strengthening the
military under his control and by conducting rigged
referenda. He also changed the 1935 Philippine
constitution, drafted a new one - the 1973 constitution
- and abolished the bicameral Philippine Congress. To
serve as the Philippine legislature during martial law,
Marcos created a unicameral Interim National Assembly,
but it never convened. Instead, the Interim Batasang
Pambansa replaced the Interim National Assembly.
During the entire martial-law period, all
political parties were proscribed. Political-party
leaders including Benigno Aquino Jr, Sergio Osmena Jr,
Raul Manglapus, Jose Diokno and Jovito Salonga, among
others were arrested and detained immediately after the
declaration of martial law. More than 30,000 people were
reported detained during the early days of martial law
and the total number of detainees swelled to more than
50,000 at its peak. By 1977, some 70,000 people had been
imprisoned for their political beliefs at one time or
another after martial law was declared.
During
the martial-law period, the revolutionary activities of
the old CPP waned considerably. It even entered into a
"national unity agreement" with the Marcos
administration in October 1974 and was granted legal
status by the regime. Members of the old CPP imprisoned
during the early phase of martial law were granted
amnesty and were given an active role in some Marcos
cooperatives and agrarian reform institutions. But the
Maoist CPP intensified its revolutionary activities
against what the new CPP members called a US-Marcos
dictatorship.
The CPP increased its strength by
recruiting more cadres and guerrilla fighters both from
the universities and the countryside. In 1971, Sison
claimed that the new CPP reached a mass base of 400,000
in 18 provinces in the country and stressed that the
"problem is no longer how to start a revolution but how
to extend and intensify it".
One of the most
important events in the history of the re-established
CPP during the martial-law period was the formation of
the National Democratic Front on April 24, 1973. The NDF
was the political arm and front organization of the
re-established CPP. It was composed of underground
associations of workers, the urban poor, youth, farmers,
teachers and even religious leaders. On its founding
day, the NDF issued a 10-point program, which was
reaffirmed and elaborated on November 12, 1977. The top
three points were:
1. Unite all anti-imperialist and
democratic forces to overthrow the US-Marcos
dictatorship and work for the establishment of a
coalition government based on a truly democratic system
of representation.
2. Expose and oppose US
imperialism as the mastermind behind the setting-up of
the fascist dictatorship, struggle for the nullification
of all unequal treaties and arrangements with this
imperialist power, and call for the nationalization of
all its properties in the country.
3. Fight for the
re-establishment of all democratic rights of the people,
such as freedom of speech, the press, assembly,
association, movement, religious belief and the right to
due process.
In 1976, NPA commander Dante
Buscayno was captured by government agents, but it did
not hinder the revolutionary activities of the
re-established CPP. The party reported that from 1980 to
1981 alone, NPA operations expanded from 300 to more
than 400 towns in 47 compared with 40 provinces. The NPA
also claimed that in 1981, its military operations had
moved from "early" to "advanced" strategic defensive.
The ratification of the amended Philippine
constitution in April 1981 was followed by the holding
of presidential elections on June 26, 1981. Marcos ran
in this election to get a "fresh mandate" from the
Philippine people. The election demonstrated the
continued dominance of Marcos' Kilusang Bagong Lipunan
(KBL, or New Society Movement) when he was re-elected.
Marcos' re-election to the presidency was expected.
Nobody wanted to challenge him, believing that he would
just manipulate the election to maintain his legitimacy.
All opposition parties except one boycotted the
election. Of all the factors that obstructed the
development of democracy in the Philippines, US policy
occupied the top of the list.
Next: The Bush vision
Henry C K Liu is chairman of the New
York-based Liu Investment Group.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
