RP drone base

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/30/2012



As I wrote last December 2011, the “useful idiot” is pursuing his autocratic mission for the master albeit very ineptly in all aspects but one — kowtowing to everything the US ultra-war hawks want. But in everything else, the idiot is bumbling along and nobody knows if he will get through to getting the preliminary steps done at all.

The idiot’s first step toward consolidating his autocratic power has been a disaster as the public perception of his impeachment crusade against the Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice (CJ) has stalled badly, with inept prosecutors, the ridicule from senator-judges, and simple defense panel legal repartees to prosecution offensives.

Mainstream media have tried their best to support the idiot; but they themselves look idiotic with headlines (such as “100 witnesses against Chief Justice Corona”) to help the anti-CJ psy-war that end up making the CJ really look like the oppressed underdog.

Still, no matter how wanting they all are, the idiot and his cohorts are really making great strides in opening the Philippines to future regional conflict by inviting US bases back!

The day after reports came out about the idiot’s invitation, the US responds with headlines here that say, “US lauds troops offer but won’t return bases.” After the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) lie to justify the mission attacking Iraq (“Enduring Freedom”) and the R2P (Right to Protect) “No Fly Zone” in Libya, which became a merciless bombing campaign of civilian population centers — with estimated civilian deaths running to 50,000 — do they expect Filipinos and the world to just take their word for it?

Like Bill Clinton who once said “I did not have sex with that woman” despite Monica Lewinsky having serviced him, the US State Department can say “no troops bases” with a straight face because it will not be troop bases but military drone bases that will be set up in the Philippines while our Armed Forces personnel are used as cannon fodder, with antiquated and defenseless Hamilton cutters and an F-16 squadron designed to lure the regional “enemy” into a flimsy US ruse.

One hears even “progressive” intellectuals make the alibi for a revival of US presence in the region on the pretext that China will be a superpower soon to replace US imperialism. But that is a superficial thesis. The era of one, overarching superpower monopolizing the world or a region is a thing of the past in this present solidly multi-polar world.

China can never hope to be an overbearing imperialist power even if it wanted to because the other centers of power in the region (such as India, Russia and emerging ones like Indonesia, as well as others like Brazil in Latin America) will no longer allow any such singular power to dominate.

The only one that is aspiring to reestablish its slipping status as the singular superpower in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union is the US. With its lapdog North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), it has tried to start its “Project for a New American Century” with little success, sputtering in Iraq and Afghanistan—already being described as the new “Vietnams.”

Even in Libya, the US-Nato’s R2P victim is now turning out to be a liability to the Western powers as anti-imperialist movements have begun to fight back. Last week the anti-National Transition Council (NTC) forces retook Bani Walid and drove out Nato’s useful idiots (who are getting paid the pieces of silver promised them while $100 billion of Libya’s reserves, which were frozen during the anti-Gaddafi campaign, are sitting in US, French, Italian and other Western banks). Only idiots can believe these Western powers and agree to work under them.

This week Iran may impose its oil ban on the European Union (EU) to preempt any US-EU oil embargo threats, crippling the EU (and us in the process) while India and China will stop using US dollars to buy oil from Iran and use currency swaps and gold. And as South Korea and Japan are not expected to comply with the Western oil embargo, the US is now fast becoming a paper tiger, with the world much better off with the many powers emerging.

As such, the Philippines should stop the US’ useful idiot here from pushing this country into an unwanted conflict with China. Vietnam is now in solid negotiations with China for a fair sharing of the bounties of the South China Sea.

David Brown writes in Asia Times, “Even more surprising is that … based on a legal regime and principles defined by international law, including the UN Convention on Law of the Sea (Unclos), Vietnam and China would ‘make efforts to seek basic and long-term solutions acceptable to both sides for sea-related disputes’… ‘actively discuss(ing) co-operation for mutual development.’”

Last Jan. 27, Boris Volkhonsky wrote on GlobalResearch that “First of all, a network of special operation bases and the use of drones signify that the US would be able to attack any adversary anywhere, not bothering too much about whether they are attacking a sovereign state… Sources say that the US plans to use such bases in Australia and in the Philippines, which reflects a new emphasis Washington is laying on confronting China along its eastern borders. With drones and special bases being deployed all over the globe and especially in the vicinity of such a sensitive area as the South China Sea, it gives the US new opportunities to further alienate an unlimited number of nations.”

So even as the real game is now shaping up to be allowing “drone bases” at various points in the Philippines, the useful idiot in Malacañang still will not take his cue from this — useful idiot indeed!

(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “US drone bases in the Philippines;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)