Columns Reinventing the Philippines Reinventing the Philippine Military to Prevent the Coming of a Junta
| Reinventing the Philippine Military to Prevent the Coming of a Junta |
Part One of "Reinventing the Philippine Military" Series
An alumnus of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) asked hypothetically this writer the possible reaction of the United States government if a military junta were to take over the Philippine government? He asked me also the probable reaction of the Filipino-American community to the rule by the Philippine military?
I answered also hypothetically. I said that the United States and Filipino Americans would not support a military takeover of the Philippine Government. But . . .
Overseas Filipinos, especially American citizens of Philippine descent, are fed up with the apparent inability of Filipino civilian leaders and the top brass of the Philippine military to eradicate corruption in the Philippine bureaucracy and provide the basic needs of the people (housing, employment, security, economic opportunities, etc.)
The Overseas-Filipino World (OFW) may not offer much resistance to the imposition of military rule in the Philippines. I said that if the OFW, especially Filipino Americans, will not protest vehemently military rule in the homeland, American politicians might probably take a wait-and-see attitude before it “recognizes” the new Philippine government.
I said that this would be so, especially if the three PMA alumni who ran in yesterday's election for the Philippine Senate (Sen. Panfilo Lacson, and alleged coup leaders Gregorio Honasan III and Antonio Trillanes IV) were to win or even make a very strong showing. The political mandate generated by these three PMAyer-candidates would be tantamount to an argument that the military has the support of the people in moving for reforms.
But I said that a military junta is not the solution to the pressing problems of the Philippines. I opined that it would be better if the soldiers would stay in the barracks and a “reinvention” of the Philippine military were to take place in an orderly and constitutional process.
The Lesson of “Black Jack” Pershing
In reality, making the Philippines into a huge military camp would not solve the country’s problems. Military solutions have not worked in defusing the Moro rebellion in Mindanao and eliminating the threat of the New People’s Army (NPA) communist cadres. Why? Even during the American occupation of the Philippines, some of West Point’s best and brightest graduates could not defeat the Moro warriors. Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, with his training in West Point and in the Indian Wars, became the top leader of the American forces in Mindanao in the 1910s. But he failed. General “Black Jack” could not earn a 21-gun salute and defeat the native Filipino-Muslim warriors. And there was no way of turning the pacification campaign into genocide. General Pershing failed to make a name in Mindanao. He became, however, the celebrated American hero in Europe during World War I, where he was sent after his undistinguished career in Mindanao.
Yes, General Pershing and his soldiers could defeat the Prussian and the Ottoman empires but they could not win against the Sultanate of Sulu and other Moro tribes in Mindanao.
On the other hand, President Ramon Magsaysay was able to defeat the Hukbalahap (communist) rebellion in the early 1950s by winning the hearts and minds of the rebels. Starting as the Defense Secretary of President Elpidio Quirino, Mr. Magsaysay won the psychological warfare (psy war) and brought the rebels who surrendered to Mindanao, which was then made into a Filipino version of the Biblical Promised Land. In Mindanao, the former rebels were given agricultural land and opportunities to lead new productive but peaceful lives. (Unfortunately after President Magsaysay died in a plane accident on March 17, 1957, Mindanao slowly became the Land of Broken Promises, or at least the land of promising politicians who never delivered on their promises of socioeconomic reforms.)
With due respect to the armed-forces leadership of the Philippines and to retired Gens. Fidel V. Ramos (a former Philippine President) and Panfilo Lacson and Honasan (a former senator), Trillanes and Company, military solutions have never worked in Mindanao.
Resort to military formulae has not worked either in the barrios in LuzonVisayan Islands where the communist rebels operate. The Spanish and American colonizers tried but failed to subdue the Moro Filipino freedom fighters for almost 400 years.
According to Sen. Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr., the Moro leadership had assured him that one of two workable solutions is the adoption of a Federal System of Government (FSG). The other solution is to grant outright independence to the secessionist movement in Mindanao.
The civilian leaders of the Philippines may wish to address the reforms needed for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP). If I were a top legislator of the homeland, I will file several urgent bills to “reinvent” the Philippine military. The first bill needed in reinventing the military is to change the Philippine criminal-justice system (please go to http://www.mabuhayradio.com/content/view/34/90/ if you have not read it yet).
(Click here to read Part 2 . . .)
Then Secretary of National Defense Ramon
Magsaysay showed the way on how to deal with rebel
Hukbalahaps. The Huks were gaining sympathizers
because the Philippine Army was committing human-
rights violtions. In our town in Bulacan, many
able-bodied males were picked up and tortured in a
notorious military camp. To avoid being picked up and
tortured, many from our barrio simply joined the Huk
movement. Our own barrio produced at least two Huk
commanders.
Still, there was a great difference between then
and now. Those picked up then were merely tortured.
In general, after less than a week, they were
released. Now, we know that most of the victims never
returned to their families.
Defense Secretary Ramon Magsaysay stopped the
human rights violations of the Philippine Army. As a
result, the barrio folks no longer feared them.
Eventually, those who joined the Huks for fear of the
military surrendered and went back to their peaceful
lives in our barrio. Others found new settlement in
the government-designated place in Mindanao, developed
by EDCOR.
So the claim that Col. Edward Landsdale and the
CIA merely created Ramon Magsaysay (from the book
Portrait of a Cold Warrior, if my memory serves) is a BIG
LIE. It was more a case of them betting on the right
horse. Magsaysay would win the then presidential
elections even without the help of the CIA because he
made reforms in the military that were felt all the
way down to the grassroots--the many poor folks in the
countryside who loved him and gave him a landslide
victory. In addition, he inspired hope among many
Filipinos. I saw the mammoth crowd that greeted then
presidential candidate Magsaysay in our town--a great
contrast to the subdued crowd in the subsequent visit
of the rival President Elpidio Quirino.
Proof that the CIA's help was not the cause of
Magsaysay's victory: After his death, in the next
presidential elections, the CIA supported Manuel
Manahan, a Magsaysay boy, yet he lost to the
nationalist Carlos P. Garcia of Bohol, who espoused
the Filipino First policy--the policy undone later by
the free-market economist and lawyer President
Diosdado P. Macapagal.
Unfortunately, what Magsaysay did that endeared
him to barrio folks was never given wide publicity and
is generally unknown in urban areas. I have first hand
information of it because as a pre-school boy, I saw
how even our tenants were arrested by the military,
and how my brothers and our tenants feared the
military more than the Huks. In fact, two of our
tenants were executed by the military on the mere
suspicion that they were Huks because they were not
wearing hats when the military encountered them, as
relayed by one similarly captured by the military but
released later. I know for a fact that they were not
Huks because they had always stayed in our farm where
they worked. What's more, they did not have guns. I
myself saw their decomposing bodies in a creek not far
from the barrio. Up to now, I cannot forget the
wailing of their bereaved mother when they were buried
right in the place where they were found. At that
time, there was no complaint made against the military
because it was useless to do so.
Aside from executing two of our tenants, the military
also burned our big farmhouse that overlooked our vast
riceland and cornland. We never replaced that big
farmhouse again. These cruel and unkind incidents,
Magsaysay put an end to--and I am one of countless
barrio people who silently thanked him for it. His
good deed and service to the nation is etched in our
memory.
If we come to think of it, the culprit is not the
Philippine Army per se but just its LEADERSHIP--then
and now. The great majority of the military are loyal
servants of the nation who risk their lives for their
country.
At present, with the disappearances and killings
of alleged NPA sympathizers, the military will have an
even harder time fighting the NPA's. The reason is
that the rebels are fighting a guerrilla warfare.
Their faces and whereabouts are unknown. The possible
link in finding them--who else if not their supposed
sympathizers--are gone now and eliminated. Therefore,
the means of catching the NPA's once they come down
from the mountains and visit barangays--no longer
exist because apparently killed by the military that
need them for the valuable intelligence information
that they can provide!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So how will the
military find the NPA's now who merely conduct hit and
run operations????? Get my point?
Mar Tecson
As posted originally in the Cebu Politics Forum
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If you want to present a factual presentation on the subject matter, I suggest you get hold of the book, "The Red Lie," we produced in 1954, as a psy-war group in a little-known Civil Affairs Section of the Department of Defense. That obscure Section was initially organized under the then, Col. Nick T.Jimenez, then turned over to the then Col. Jose Crisol,PMA '42. And the psy-war staff whose names were declassified for public consumpton were: Colonels: Jose Ma. Guerrero, Eulogio Dua, Jose Angeles, USAFFE Bataan Death March survivors and myself, Col.(Ret.US) Frank B. Quesada, associate PMA '44. World War-II POW. Other (a dozen names) have not been declassified. Albeit civilian psy-war experts i.e., Atty. Juan Gualberto Planas and Fr. Arthur Weiss,S.J.
All of us were under the then National Defense Secretary Ramon Magsaysay, who served as the inspiration that made us write that book. It is a factual resume of our work .The book is a compledium of how we, Filipino craftsmen particularly delved deep into the Communist ideology long ignored, as well as its toxic capacity understimated. No one but us understood the "Huk" problem which was no less a national agrarian society in revolt - a real threat to tne Philippine Republic. I can not acccount for the much bruited about some arm-chair participation of supposed U.S. publicized advisers whom we were unable to meet .
I was practically in the vortex of the campaign due to my pre-war association to, and with a comrade in the Philippine Army, the then Lt. (Res.) Reg Taruc, younger brother of the Huk Supremo LuisTaruc. Reg is a World War-II comrade who fought against the Japanese Imperial invading forces, however, was an indoctrinated member of the "Hukbalahap" (Hukbo ng bansa laban sa Hapon) The "Huks "as they were briefly called, were a formidable army of 12,000 regulars with proven support of over a hundred-thousand peasants in Central Luzon. Luis Taruc was the Supremo who was elected congressman, but denied a seat in the new Philippine Congress by elitist Filipino politicians.
Luis took to the hills to evade further persecution and led the Huks into an armed struggle against brother Filipino elitists who would not accept Luis as a legislator. Thus, an open dissident war erupted.
However, Luis miscalculated the odds; the dynamic Filipino leader, Ramon Magsaysay, a comrade of mine in World War-II from Zambales, whose outfit was organized and manned by my comrades in the Hunters-ROTC Guerrillas led by Phil. Military Academy (PMA) officers and university cadets. Magsaysay rose from Congressman to Secretary of National Defense - turned goverment battalions into effective counter-insurgency force with U.S aid (materials but not troops) they crushed the rebellion. ##
If you want to interview my fellow WW-II comrade Col (Ret.) .Reg.Taruc, now age 90 , a US recognized WW-II veteran. He is here in Illinois, with his wife Gloria Aquino, cousin of the late Sen.Benigno Aquino Jr., He can elucidate on the Philippne Agraian Society Revolt, of which he is an authority, not to leave out how we, and Sec. Magsaysay convinced the Huks to lay down their arms and live peacefully under the fold of the law. Your treatise could be helpful to the AFP, if you submit it for evaluation. It, however, has to be scrutinized by the Dept. of National Defense. And it could be a supplementary reading of Philippine history. I will be gad to have a printed copy of each of your articles listed in your posting. Best wishes.
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Dept.of National Defense DND) AFP.
Rene of Chino Hills, CA
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