THE
WAR on Iraq was waged by the United States (US) supposedly to disarm
the country of its alleged weapons of mass destruction and liberate
the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
US President George W. Bush himself has made admissions to the
effect that there may be no need to disarm Iraq at all. There seems
to be no sign of Saddam anywhere in Iraq, and his officials have one
by one been falling or turning themselves in. These seem to suggest
that the US has won the war.
Since the official aims of the war were disarmament and the ouster
of the Hussein regime, the apparent victory of the US in Iraq makes
its continuing presence there irrelevant. Yet it has gone so far as
to sponsor political meetings with the goal of determining the future
of Iraq-a job that should be left to the Iraqi people since they are
a sovereign people. (In the first place the imposition of "regime
change" is itself violative of sovereignty.)
All indications suggest that the real objective of this war is an
occupation of Iraq.
Occupation, as history now so clearly shows, was also the real objective
of the war that the US launched in the Philippines in 1898, which
supposedly aimed to liberate the Filipino people from Spanish colonial
oppression.
To this day the US continues to wage war in the Philippines under
the guise of saving the Filipino people from terrorism-even as it
turns a blind eye to the terrorism perpetrated by state forces against
the Filipino people, as so chillingly exemplified recently by the
murders of peace advocates Eden Marcellana and Eddie Gumanoy, who
have been instrumental in the conduct of the peace talks between the
Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic
Front (NDF). The US-supported Armed Forces of the Philippines has
been playing a prominent part in scuttling peace negotiations with
the NDF and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, groups whose causes
have been recognized as legitimate by no less than the United Nations,
as well as the likes of Vice President Teofisto Guingona, Jr.
Overseas, even as the situation in Iraq has no final resolution in
sight, the US is browbeating two other nations: Syria, North Korea,
and Cuba.
The US has been accusing Syria of harboring officials of the Hussein
regime and maintaining weapons of mass destruction. It has even resorted
to the preposterous claim that the said country is hiding Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction. No evidence has been offered to substantiate
these claims.
Meanwhile, it has been pressuring North Korea to yield to demands
for nuclear disarmament even as it brazenly refuses to confront its
own issues in relation to nuclear weapons. The US retains the most
nuclear stockpiles in the world though it signed the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
We are concerned about the fate of these countries. Recent experience,
particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq, shows that the US would stop
at nothing to wage wars it has threatened to wage-however baseless,
however devoid of legitimacy.
The intention of this borderless military campaign of the US is
clearly to strengthen its economic and political hegemony through
the employment of military might.
We the Filipino youth do not want to grow old in a world where one
nation acts as a feudal lord towards the rest of the human community.
It is our fond dream that we would grow old in a world where peace
and justice reign.
It is in view of all these that we opposed the war on Iraq and oppose
the entire borderless US war on "terror." For the future
of this nation and the whole world, we urge the Philippine government—as
we commemorate the September 11 World Trade Center attacks—to
withdraw its support for this conscienceless military adventure.
Ederic Eder
Dennis Espada
Evelyn Katigbak
Garry Lazaro
Raymond Palatino
Alexander Martin Remollino
PJ C. Villarta
September 11, 2003
Filipino
Youth for Peace
