I rarely argue with fellow columnists. Especially those published in The Manila Times, a paper I deeply respect for its willingness to present diverse and opposing points of view.
That said, however, one recent headline almost caused me to spill my morning coffee. “PH cry:” it read, “China, crush America now.” Wow, I thought, trying desperately to slow the spasmodic twitching of my fingers, that’s the most absurd plea I’ve heard in years!
The piece—by Mauro Gia Samonte—argues that because China will inevitably get drawn into America’s war with Iran and because the US maintains bases in the Philippines, this peaceful country will get caught in the “vortex” of a tragic conflict between two major superpowers.
“Let go of any sense of goodwill [from] America,” Samonte writes. “The lesson of the 1945 atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki clearly depicts an America incapable of having any qualms about resorting to utter atrocities to achieve its evil aims.”
His solution: “…if the idea is to beat America once and for all, beat it now. China, you [can] do it.”
Wow, I barely even know where to begin. So let me start by saying that, as an American, I certainly can’t justify or defend all my country’s actions throughout history. One thing I can definitely defend, however, is its successful effort to end World War II. Say what you will regarding the wisdom of bombing Japan, but the larger intent of that act was hardly “evil.”
Furthermore, Samonte’s basic argument is deeply flawed. According to virtually every expert who’s opined on the matter, Beijing is highly unlikely to directly involve itself in the Iranian war. “China may have the world’s second-largest defense budget,” Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy advisor for the International Crisis Group, writes in Time, “but its military modernization remains overwhelmingly oriented toward its objectives within Asia.”
Moreover, if China did what Samonte suggests, the most likely result would be exactly what he claims to oppose—a bloody conflagration with the Philippines in the middle.
There are several other ridiculous and long-debunked conspiracy theories advanced in Samonte’s column. My favorite: that America “crashed its own Twin Towers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks…to drum up public support for its war on terror against Al-Qaeda—when at that very hour then-president George W. Bush was hobnobbing in Florida with a cousin of Osama bin Laden.”
Headline news to the millions worldwide—including myself—who saw a now-famous video of Bush first learning of the attack while reading a book called The Pet Goat to a classroom full of children at Sarasota’s Emma E. Booker Elementary School.
But let’s get to the crux of the matter: the meandering war in Iran. Again, Samonte defeats himself with his own inverted logic. “What do you expect?” he writes in describing China’s imagined attack on American bases in the Philippines. “You see somebody digging your grave, you keep your hands akimbo? …self-preservation is the primordial instinct.”
An absolute truth. Which is exactly why America and Israel attacked Iran. By far the world’s primary exporter of terrorism, the country is the number one purveyor of conflict in the Middle East and, potentially, everywhere else. Controlled by a kabala of religious fanatics who prefer death to surrender and see their ultimate mission as obliterating the non-Muslim world, Iran doesn’t deploy its aggression in traditional ways. Instead of attacking militarily from outside, it organizes and finances powerful proxies to attack its enemies from within. And, instead of sharing the world’s view of nuclear armaments as deterrents, it deems them weapons with which to advance its own agenda.
Bottom line: neutralizing the current Iranian regime constitutes wise adherence to the primary lesson of history and World War II, i.e. that waiting too long only mushrooms the ensuing devastation. The question now is how long we can withstand the resulting economic crisis that may well envelope the Philippines and many other nations.
I, for one, will pray for the strength to endure.
I suggest that you do too.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author living in Northern Mindanao. His latest book is Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
