War
Against Terror?
By Alexander Martin Remollino
FIRST, HE said,
"Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists."
Recently he
went further. "If governments don't act, America will,"
he said.
This series
of threats by His Excellency, United States President George W.
Bush, all started after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. Employing to full force his fluency
in Messianic and Wild Western languages, he proceeded to declare
war on international terrorism and fight for "everything that
is just and right."
But what really
prompted this declaration of war?
There had been
international terrorists for a long time. But the US, which had
long since assigned unto itself the role of international cop, had
been lax in combatting them. Before September 11, 2001, Osama bin
Laden had bombed the World Trade Center--by the US's own account--but
it took a September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center for
the US to pursue international terrorists as aggressively as it
has been doing.
While at that,
it is worth noting that the Philippines has borne on its shoulders
troubles with the Abu Sayyaf for quite sometime, but it was only
after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that
the Philippines happened to be classified by the US as a terrorist
haven. One wonders how, considering the extreme difficulty of gathering
accurate intelligence information, the US suddenly acquired all
its current knowledge of terrorist activities in the Philippines--enough
to warrant, in a US official's own estimation, the presence of its
troops in our land--without any clear definition of their accountability.
The September
11, 2001 attacks came at a point where the US was experiencing a
recession. Companies were closing down and millions were losing
their jobs. The retaliation of the US was unusually swift. Could
it be that the global war on terrorism being waged by the US was
devised as a stop-gap measure to arrest the discontent that would
most probably arise from the conditions of the US at that time?
Wars have been known to remedy unemployment by hoarding unemployed
multitudes into weapons and ammunitions factories.
Let us not allow
ourselves to be used as pawns in a war we have nothing to do with.
---------------
Alexander Martin Remollino, 24, is now with Ibon Foundation. He
is involved in social and political campaigns both in the streets
and on the Internet.
For
comments and reactions to this article, please visit Tinig.com
Forums.
|
