Good and bad September 12, 2006
JOVITO Palparan, says the New People's Army (NPA, is a "dead man walking." That would be so especially after yesterday, the birthday of Ferdinand Marcos, the kamikaze-style razing of the World Trade Center five years ago, and the day of Palparan's retirement. The NPA does not forget, and Palparan's "crimes against the people" do not require the memory of elephants.
Palparan himself is unfazed. He figured -- rightly -- that he would be thrown a bone in the form of another government position as his reward from a government in whose name he has murdered. A position that would keep him safe and in power. He has shrugged off the threat saying -- wrongly -- that the people would protect him.
What can I say? They can play their macho games all they want, but neither of them is going to get any sympathy from the public.
The NPA's knee-jerk reaction to Palparan merely shows why government targeted its members in the first place. Which is that they have a way of alienating the public with their own murderous ways, couched in quasi-judicial and completely injudicious language. Their threat to Palparan, passed off as a revolutionary way of righting wrongs, in fact merely reminds the public of the revolutionary way they massacred their own comrades whom they suspected of being spies (the "killing fields") and the revolutionary way they assassinated their own leaders who had broken from their ranks and whom they presumed to have become counter-revolutionary.
At the very least, what's wrong with their threat is that even if they manage to carry it out, it won't weaken government but strengthen it. I don't know that for all Palparan's willingness to do as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo bids over and beyond the call of mayhem, Arroyo would be greatly overwrought to see him go. All sending Palparan to the next life would do, quite apart from torment the residents of the next life, is give Arroyo her own 9/11.
Lest we forget, 9/11 did not weaken the imbecile George W. Bush, it gave him a new lease on life, enough to win a second term. Without having to resort to dagdag-bawas, as he did the first time in Florida and as his poodle in that obscure country in the Pacific called the Philippines more blatantly did. Almost overnight, it allowed the worst elements in the American Right to seize power, invade Afghanistan and Iraq and support Israel in its occupation of Lebanon, and terrorize the local populace with the Homeland Security Act. 9/11 did not put fear in the hearts of Americans (the Bush administration did that more effectively), it put anger in them. Instead of scorning Nixon and Kissinger's ideological successors, Bush and Cheney, like the plague, they embraced them.
If the NPA manages to assassinate Palparan, it won't put the brakes on Arroyo's campaign of terror against its members and her critics, who are often indistinguishable, it will release it completely. It will allow the worst elements in the AFP, notably the generals who helped Arroyo cheat, to do pretty much anything they please in the name of fighting a vicious enemy. GMA herself will find in that assassination the moral ground to fulminate against the NPA the way Bush found the moral ground to rail against al-Qaeda, making the world forget the atrocities they themselves wreaked upon the world.
At the very most, for all Palparan's homicidal bent, he is no better and no worse than Raul Gonzalez, a convenient lightning rod to attract lightning, or clown to draw laughter. The policy does not originate from him, even if he is perfectly capable of improvising sanguinely on it or indeed bringing it to its logical -- or bloodthirstily insane -- conclusion. It originates from Arroyo, and ultimately from the near-universal perception of her illegitimacy. Illegitimacy breeds dictatorship -- and madness.
The killings won't go away with Palparan because they have found justification or reinforcement in the ideology or culture of war. Even worse than the killings themselves, as I've repeatedly said, is the ease with which they have been rationalized and met with indifference, if not tacit acceptance, by the public. Even worse than the summary execution of people is the extirpation of the very spirit of democracy. Even worse than the deaths of activists and journalists is the culture of death that is thriving in the national mind and making those deaths possible.
You cannot fight that by assassinating individuals, notwithstanding that those individuals are butchers in their own right, or wrong. The only way to fight force is with force, true, but at the profoundest level what that really means is that the only way to fight brute force is with the force of principle. The only way to kill a bad idea is with a good idea.
You want to stop the killings, you do not show that you are just as capable of killing as the enemy. You show that you are capable of valuing life. You want to stop the rioting of the culture of war, you do not add fuel to the fire by escalating the violence. You wage peace against those who wage war. You want to stop the widespread acceptance of death, you foment the widespread demand for life.
The killings won't be stopped by more killings, they will be stopped by more human rights, or a nation demanding to have them. The deaths won't be stopped by more deaths, they will be stopped by more democracy, or a nation demanding to get it back. The war won't be stopped by more war, it will be stopped by a nation demanding to have peace-not the peace of the dead but the peace of justice. Peace and justice are but two sides of the same coin. They are not two concepts, they are one.
As in Ferdinand Marcos' time, as in any dictator's time, if we want to stop the killings, we have to wage the campaign for justice and peace, human rights and freedom, antiwar and anti-tyranny all over again.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=20414
Palparan himself is unfazed. He figured -- rightly -- that he would be thrown a bone in the form of another government position as his reward from a government in whose name he has murdered. A position that would keep him safe and in power. He has shrugged off the threat saying -- wrongly -- that the people would protect him.
What can I say? They can play their macho games all they want, but neither of them is going to get any sympathy from the public.
The NPA's knee-jerk reaction to Palparan merely shows why government targeted its members in the first place. Which is that they have a way of alienating the public with their own murderous ways, couched in quasi-judicial and completely injudicious language. Their threat to Palparan, passed off as a revolutionary way of righting wrongs, in fact merely reminds the public of the revolutionary way they massacred their own comrades whom they suspected of being spies (the "killing fields") and the revolutionary way they assassinated their own leaders who had broken from their ranks and whom they presumed to have become counter-revolutionary.
At the very least, what's wrong with their threat is that even if they manage to carry it out, it won't weaken government but strengthen it. I don't know that for all Palparan's willingness to do as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo bids over and beyond the call of mayhem, Arroyo would be greatly overwrought to see him go. All sending Palparan to the next life would do, quite apart from torment the residents of the next life, is give Arroyo her own 9/11.
Lest we forget, 9/11 did not weaken the imbecile George W. Bush, it gave him a new lease on life, enough to win a second term. Without having to resort to dagdag-bawas, as he did the first time in Florida and as his poodle in that obscure country in the Pacific called the Philippines more blatantly did. Almost overnight, it allowed the worst elements in the American Right to seize power, invade Afghanistan and Iraq and support Israel in its occupation of Lebanon, and terrorize the local populace with the Homeland Security Act. 9/11 did not put fear in the hearts of Americans (the Bush administration did that more effectively), it put anger in them. Instead of scorning Nixon and Kissinger's ideological successors, Bush and Cheney, like the plague, they embraced them.
If the NPA manages to assassinate Palparan, it won't put the brakes on Arroyo's campaign of terror against its members and her critics, who are often indistinguishable, it will release it completely. It will allow the worst elements in the AFP, notably the generals who helped Arroyo cheat, to do pretty much anything they please in the name of fighting a vicious enemy. GMA herself will find in that assassination the moral ground to fulminate against the NPA the way Bush found the moral ground to rail against al-Qaeda, making the world forget the atrocities they themselves wreaked upon the world.
At the very most, for all Palparan's homicidal bent, he is no better and no worse than Raul Gonzalez, a convenient lightning rod to attract lightning, or clown to draw laughter. The policy does not originate from him, even if he is perfectly capable of improvising sanguinely on it or indeed bringing it to its logical -- or bloodthirstily insane -- conclusion. It originates from Arroyo, and ultimately from the near-universal perception of her illegitimacy. Illegitimacy breeds dictatorship -- and madness.
The killings won't go away with Palparan because they have found justification or reinforcement in the ideology or culture of war. Even worse than the killings themselves, as I've repeatedly said, is the ease with which they have been rationalized and met with indifference, if not tacit acceptance, by the public. Even worse than the summary execution of people is the extirpation of the very spirit of democracy. Even worse than the deaths of activists and journalists is the culture of death that is thriving in the national mind and making those deaths possible.
You cannot fight that by assassinating individuals, notwithstanding that those individuals are butchers in their own right, or wrong. The only way to fight force is with force, true, but at the profoundest level what that really means is that the only way to fight brute force is with the force of principle. The only way to kill a bad idea is with a good idea.
You want to stop the killings, you do not show that you are just as capable of killing as the enemy. You show that you are capable of valuing life. You want to stop the rioting of the culture of war, you do not add fuel to the fire by escalating the violence. You wage peace against those who wage war. You want to stop the widespread acceptance of death, you foment the widespread demand for life.
The killings won't be stopped by more killings, they will be stopped by more human rights, or a nation demanding to have them. The deaths won't be stopped by more deaths, they will be stopped by more democracy, or a nation demanding to get it back. The war won't be stopped by more war, it will be stopped by a nation demanding to have peace-not the peace of the dead but the peace of justice. Peace and justice are but two sides of the same coin. They are not two concepts, they are one.
As in Ferdinand Marcos' time, as in any dictator's time, if we want to stop the killings, we have to wage the campaign for justice and peace, human rights and freedom, antiwar and anti-tyranny all over again.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=20414
posted by dqfan06 @ 9:08 AM
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