Open Letter to John Howard : QC IMC

Mr. Howard,

You accuse the Philippine government of weakness by pulling out Filipino troops from Iraq to save the life of truck driver Angelo de la Cruz, abducted last July 8 by Iraqi resistance fighters who threatened to behead him if the Philippine military contingent deployed to Iraq as part of the US-led multinational “peacekeeping” force stayed there beyond July 20. You even accuse the Philippine government of putting the Australian troops in Iraq at risk by pulling its soldiers out.

Let us be clear about this: we are no fans of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and we have been visiting her with much of the most vehement criticism long before you came up with your tirades.

But the pullout of Filipino troops from Iraq, which resulted in the safe release of our countryman De la Cruz, is one very rare instance when the Philippine president acted in the interest of the nation, as she herself put it—whether she actually meant to do so or she was only fearful of the consequences of becoming further alienated, highly unpopular as she already is, from the masses should one innocent Filipino lose his head because of a questionable war. Your tirades against the Philippine government, then, in this instance, amount to the gravest insults against the Filipino people.

This war, more than a year after it was launched by the US, has nothing to show for its avowed purposes of disarming Iraq and curbing the international terrorist network.

In the weeks preceding the March 20, 2003 attack on Iraq, a United Nations arms inspection team led by Dr. Hans Blix was conducting investigations of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. The team found that Iraq had dismantled its nuclear and chemical weapons years ago.

The US boasts of having toppled an Iraqi tyrant, even as it supports tyrannical regimes in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and ignores tyranny in Myanmar. Neither has it been able to prove Saddam’s supposed links with international terrorist networks.

What the US does not say is that Iraq possesses some of the richest oil reserves in the Middle East, and was once ruled by a leader who refused to let it control the country’s oil resources.

Mr. Howard, you accuse the Filipino people of weakness for the way they responded to the hostage crisis. May we take the liberty to tell you that it is those who see no course for themselves other than to unflinchingly hug the tails of imperial mass murderers who are the real weaklings. It is they who, above all, risk the lives of their countrymen for a war that is not worth the life of even a louse, much less that of an innocent human being.

You need not look to the Philippines to find weakness, Mr. Howard. You need only look in the mirror.

Filipino Youth for Peace
August 1, 2004