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Waging
peace
Filipino
island gives U.S. an example
of how to stop insurgents in their tracks |
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| By LEE S. DREYFUS
- Special to GM Today |
January 11, 2007 |
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Our president went off to his ranch so he
could work out his new strategy for Iraq. He now says that the new
strategy will involve more troops and the use of more force. That
increased troop level probably is what the original approach should have
been after the fall of Saddam’s regime. However, Monday morning
quarterbacking is easy. Being president is not.
The basis for the use of more forces is that offering peace doesn’t
work with al-Qaida terrorists and never has. But is that true? I
remember reading a marvelous speech in college given by a black leader
who had grown up in slavery. The address was titled "Cast Down Your
Buckets Where You Are." He opened with a true story about a ship
adrift without masts or sail off the coast of Brazil. After many days
without water, they saw another ship and signaled requesting drinking
water.
The return signal was to cast down their buckets where they were. This
sounded cruel indeed; but as it turned out, they were drifting in the
outflow of the mighty Amazon River, which pours fresh water out for
almost 300 miles. What the speaker was telling his black audience was to
rebuild their lives where they were and develop the agricultural skills
they had learned as slaves. Our "new" strategy in Iraq should
do the same thing using our own experience where peace initiatives have
worked, but we’re told we have no such experience. Not true!
We are having such a success in one of the first places we took on
Muslim insurgents. I refer to the southernmost island off the
Philippines called Jolo. Special Forces Colonel Linder has been waging a
crucial but little-known battle there and has been winning with his
nonviolent approach called the Philippines model. Four years ago he
stopped the control of al-Qaida on a nearby island without firing a
shot.
He’s been waging peace by building roads and other services in very
poor Moro communities. They’ve dug wells, provided medical help and
provided comic books to teenage boys about Philippine young people who
have defeated terrorists who attacked their homes. The result so far is
that the terrorists have had their recruiting efforts stopped dead in
their tracks. The colonel’s goal is not to win affection for America
but to create a stable civil society. He thinks this is the new model
for counterinsurgency.
Poverty, not terrorism, is the most pressing problem in that country
which once was one of Asia’s richest countries and now is one of its
poorest. This has all happened in the last 60 years. Some 15 percent
live on less than $1 a day.
Filipino feelings about our country vary. Upper classes tend to view us
as former occupiers, while lower classes would like to move here. We now
have 2.5 million Filipinos here in America. Terrorists are generally
seen there as criminals and not defenders of Islam.
Their president, Gloria Arroyo, is seen by many here as dictatorial and
using the war on terrorists as a license to kill opponents. They feel
that U.S. support of her is like our support of a military dictator in
Pakistan because it helps our goals in the area. That says something
about us. A man named Santos is viewed as a terrorist leader who
believes our war against terror is just an excuse for the West to attack
Islam.
Meanwhile, Linder’s Special Forces continue doing things like putting
solar panels in a Moro village to power a school’s first Internet
connection and building another tin-roofed school. Maybe Bush should
look at this approach if it isn’t too late.
We do have an example of a successful peace initiative; and like the man
giving the speech said 100 years ago, "Cast down your bucket where
you are." |
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