by Herman Tiu Laurel

 

The October 27, 2022 news carried one headline, “PH, US want five more joint military facilities under EDCA, says senior Pentagon official.” The American “senior defense official” was not named. The nefarious Greg Polling of the AMTI and CIA-surrogate CSIS was later quoted saying “We need to move with urgency not only to build in five different locations but to add other locations in recognition of additional capabilities the Philippines has gained all those years…”

Poling added that “The Philippines now has assets it did not have before,” i.e., “missile systems” and that “It will make a lot of sense for the US to help build facilities to support those.” These missile systems sure make good targets for the defensive missiles of China when the U.S. triggers the war in Taiwan, ala-Ukraine, and draws the Philippines into firing these missiles. Meanwhile, the Balikatan exercises from the shores of Cagayan will be launched for real, using Filipino troops to assault Taiwan against PLA forces.

Why is the Pentagon and Gregory Polling now speaking for the Philippines? Are they now the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs? Is Filipino DFA Secretary Manalo so bereft of his dignity and pride as the highest Filipino official charged with the conduct of foreign affairs that he watches foreign interlopers speak with such temerity for the Philippines and does not even issue one diplomatic protest to slap them in the face?

Undoubtedly, this high-handed arrogance of the Americans is the direct result of President Bongbong Marcos, Jr.’s demeanor of appeasement and slavishness towards the Americans in the past few months he has been dealing with them. The high hopes for Bongbong Marcos to sustain what former President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, Sr. and President Rodrigo R. Duterte did in building Philippine sovereignty seems lost on this child-president!

Even the most loyal of the Bongbong Marcos loyalists are beginning to recoil at the child-president’s behavior towards the U.S. In a post on FB the very popular Jay Sonza posted the following:

 

           

 

“WE NEVER LEARN.

Our previous experience could have given us a lesson or two.

We drove them out of Subic and Clark. Yet, we entered into 2 executive agreements – VFA & EDCA, that allow colonials to come and stay.

From June 30, 2016 to June 30, 2022, we made America feel that we are an independent sovereign nation that cannot be dictated upon. We stood our ground.

That is not the case today.

The Philippines is putting at risk its trading arrangements with other countries, energy requirements and security concerns by being too clingy & accommodating (short of being subservient) to America.”

 

Ricardo Saludo of the Manila Times reacted to the news of the 5 additional EDCA bases with his article “Stop EDCA before it weaponizes and wrecks us”, referring to fellow Manila Times columnist Bobi Tiglao’s article August 8, 2022 that urged “Marcos should rescind Aquino 3rd’s EDCA now.” of. And last September 5, Ado Paglinawan wrote on ACJ that the “Deadline to Abrogate EDCA is April 27, 2023.” Clearly, this is why the U.S. on a full court press to browbeat Bongbong into submission on EDCA.

 

 

Wake up, Bongbong! As the song goes, in international politics, “Nice guys get washed away like the snow in the rain.” We don’t want the Philippines and the entire nation of Filipinos to get washed away with you in an American proxy war to fight our Asian Big Brother China to the last drop of Filipino blood. We certainly don’t want to shed Chinese blood, our brother Asians who had been our ally during the Philippine Revolution against the West and in World War II against invaders.

President Bongbong Marcos has surrounded himself with a wall of Amboys (American boys), from his cousin Babes Romualdez whom he reappointed as Philippine ambassador to the US to DFA secretary Enrique Manalo and including defense officials like DND OIC Jose C. Faustino who probably has Alzheimer’s in thinking that the Mutual Defense Treaty covers defense of Taiwan and its strait. Faustino has said that Philippine bases and forces can be used by the U.S. in a conflict over Taiwan.

Has Bongbong Marcos, Jr. not seen what the US has done to Ukraine, the European Union, and to Germany in particular. The US has destroyed their economies. Using NATO to encroach on Russia from Western Europe, penetrating through Ukraine provoking Russia into its Special Military Operation (SMO)? Has he not seen how US economic sanctions have boomeranged against its allies, the E.U. and the world, all the while raising US oil exports price 5 times to lift its own economy?

We supported BBM the past six(?) years against Leni Robredo. Leni Robredo, the overtly U.S. candidate would be disaster for the Philippines, but as things are turning out BBM may be no better than Leni Robredo. We use the term “may” as we are still holding on to the possibility that enlightenment may visit PBBM’s vision. The Philippines and the region must avoid all wars: and the main chance of averting US plans is to pull the Philippines out of the US military platform.

How certain is war if the Philippines does not stop it? The impending economic and financial collapse of the US will push it to start the war, upend the global security situation, create chaos and, in the dust and din, hope to destroy the rest of the world for it to lord over again. War followed the Great Depression; when the Dot.com bubble burst in 2000, the 2001 to 2019 US anti-terror war followed; and the 2008 US Financial Crash was followed by the US “Pivot to Asia” that China has parried deftly so far.

The U.S. today, despite its $ 23-trillion GDP, has a debt of $ 31-trillion that is still growing, a debt it can never repay. As the U.S. raises interest rates to contain inflation, it also raises its debt repayment cost. In time, its debt repayments will exceed its national income, and the bubble will inevitably burst. The US $ then collapses and the U.S. becomes a pauper nation. The only way out for the US is war…  or bust. The US pushed the Ukraine War, deconstructing the EU economy and transfer it to the US in the hopes of a salvation.

The US dares a two-front war because it hopes its regional patsies will fight the war for them, Ukraine and E.U. on the one hand, and Taiwan and the Philippines on the other. Hence, it continues its provocations against China in the Taiwan Strait to set up the final war that will destroy all perceived competition or allow itself to go down in flames. Yes, the US Deep State ruling class is in such a suicidal mode. We Filipinos should not accept the national suicide that BBM is leading us to because of his dalliance with the U.S.