By oneself one cannot know whether one’s reaction and formed opinion about a tragic event like Mamasapano when put in writing will be mere rubbish or have any use at all to those who will read it. At best for the writer it is like a release from a chest load of pain for the victims and anger for the perpetrators. To many writers it is also a noble way of earning one’s pay. To translate into simple knowledge what has been known so far about the Mamasapano PNP-SAF versus MILF-BIFF encounter, this is what I gathered:
ONE: the country has two uniformed forces, the AFP and PNP. AFP is the country’s only military arm, consist of the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy including the Marines and the Coast Guard. The PNP is the police with specialized permanent and ad hoc sub units to combat crime. The police is civilian and not military yet their higher ranks like Generals, Colonels, Majors and Captains encourage a norm of conduct that’s strictly military where discipline exacts instinctive obedience to superiors by subordinates.
Very bad allegations continue to blacken the image of the uniformed forces: AFP’s ordnance (no I please because it’s about weaponry or armaments) has been alleged to be sold to dissidents and terrorist organizations; PNP members had been alleged to engage in all sorts of crimes against the citizenry apart from their daily activities of TO SERVE AND PROTECT themselves on whatever they are doing. Filipinos consider these allegations in their belief that if there is smoke there is fire. Strong winds had always blown the smoke away but some Filipinos do not believe nor mind the fire is still there.
The Mamasapano so called “misencounter” brought out allegations that the AFP and the PNP do not trust each other; involving the INSTITUTION or just between their higher Officials is not clear; but the public believes that the lowly soldiers and policemen will at any time in battle are always ready to die for each other. Also that the suspected mistrust is caused not by patriotic reasons which is good for the country but by something else.
A lot of people did not notice that the police has been tasked to go after what in international terms belongs to the domains of war, the responsibility of the military; to go after or arrest persons protected by one or two well-equipped armies, not by a handful of mafia hooligans.
Interestingly, this might be the new world view, the new myopic world thing: to erase the classic and traditional demarcation between police and military territory in terms of assault power and defense capability. To train the military to be and do duty as policemen (to serve and protect the citizens) and to train the policemen to be and do the duty of military men (to kill the enemy) is tantamount to mixing and confusing roles of national importance. The police and the minds of the military have their own unique borders beyond which lies confusion and limitations.
This is the paradox of the Mamasapana deaths that drove the concerned and caring citizenry into frenzy. Some noticed too but without attention that the policemen who carried the coffins of the fallen cops were in soldiers’ uniform not dressed as policemen. When uncommon sense try to tamper history given roles, something funny or tragic can happen as when a wife assumed the role of husband or the husband becoming the wife even once in a while. In the Mamasapano incident, the AFP not the PNP should have been the husband.
TWO: The death of the 44 Special Action Force (SAF) policemen and some civilians is a tragedy to the public at large while the death of men on the other side could be their own martyrs. It is in a sense heroism versus martyrdom. Why the number of deaths had not happened in the reverse is the source of much anger on those on the side of the law. On the government side it is right and fitting to determine the causes of failure: what are the causes of failure and not WHO are the causes of failure.
To determine who causes of failure are is a failure itself that is not even simple idiocy. As a fourth class (first semester) ROTC cadet in UPLB in the mid-fifties I heard from other cadets that our Lieutenant tactical officer veteran of the Korean War was a sole survivor losing his entire platoon and that he seemed to be suffering from it as if being a surviving hero is a lifelong punishment. Much much later in the mid-seventies while drinking beer with students of AFP-CGSC who it turned out were buddies in the early stages of the Vietnam war, a light Colonel just burst into tears and uncontrollably sobbing. The others in the group told him it’s time to forget it, because it really was not his fault that things went wrong.
In military operations any failure in loss of lives or territory is paid for swiftly at that moment and for those correctly or wrongly at fault the punishment of conscience could be lifelong. If you bungled it in headquarters or in the battlefield you get a life sentence. There is no word to describe the deepest humiliation of man who wears the uniform of a warrior crying like a toddler.
Those were in the past which still haunts the present because now they cannot even cry those veterans of real war. It is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in so many combat arenas in the Middle East, and other countries as well. The military do not and must not accept WHO is at fault must prevail over WHAT is at fault in the critique of bungled battles.
THREE: The Senate Committee investigating Mamasapano chaired by a lady Senator looks pathetic (at least to me, may be at most too many). WHODUNIT seemed to be direction of questionings rather than WHASAT? Crying and some amount of tears are suggestive but only suggestive of whodunit. Whasat should give answers to what are the causes of failure to save the lives of the 44 SAF men after they already had accomplished their mission. Not WHO but WHAT bungled the last stages of a successful mission will provide answers that will surely AID remedial or corrective legislation. The names of the Generals and their CIC on the dock will be almost worthless in the remedial law that will result out of the investigation.
Indeed the Senate Committee seemed to have willingly waded into the impossible waters of remedial legislation. Only one or two senators seemed to have really sensible questions which were relevant to the objectives of the Senate hearing. When more and more questions were asked then more and more likelihood they are beating dead meat.
FOUR: Do not cry over spilled milk is a lousy admonition or advice. Not in this case. Although this looked like what the Senate hearing has precisely accomplished. You see the baby who spilled the milk is already crying. It is lousier to ask who spilled the milk. It is more adult and rational but more difficult to ask WHAT spilled the milk anyway? Gravity is the answer difficult to disprove but carelessness of what kind is what people like senators are paid by taxes to decipher. The Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) ask any pre-law student is NOT a law it is Bill to be submitted to Congress to be jack hammered by the House of Representatives and the Senate and may still have to be ratified by the people before it becomes law.
What’s in a name ester title anyway? It is presumptuousness if not a form of human plasticity. Taking Shakespeare’s line: A boyfriend buys cheap a bunch of little rosebuds and gave them to his girl who was expecting large roses. The girl friend is not amused because a rosebud is not a rose although it smells as sweet. In the public interest, a bill is not a law; a cease fire allows not the death of some people. And that WHAT and not who is at fault should be the FOCUS of an investigation IN AID OF FUTURE LEGISLATION.
FIVE: Citizen’s comments on the news became unheeded on why there seemed be no interest on justice for the fallen, no palpable interest or lukewarm efforts to go after the killers. Instead there was Senate concentrated fire on the suspected bunglers; when these bunglers had already been meted their swift punishments with their conscience damaged for life. Future laws arising from the Senate hearing should have addressed the questions why the living relatives of the fallen heroes as reported by media were angered more by unsatisfactory empathy and sympathy from higher authority than by the cold disinterest to go after the killers. Remedial legislation should look at AregLaw by the courts as possible culprit of why many victims’ of other crimes had developed cheapened or dampened interest for justice.
SIX AND THE LAST: For a congressional committee to claim broad and noble objectives of the entire government like public service and protection of the people as it conducts an investigation is to say the least by way of kindness should at least be more specific about objectives of the hearing to show sufficient understanding as to how their expensive hearings and sessions can aid future legislation.
What were seen, heard and read are mostly about the Mamasapano aftermath than its future consequences to be influenced and steered by future legislation. Mamasapano is truly unique Philippine character of writing history. Loss of lives in tens not even in hundreds by natural calamities or by political incidents (about 60-70 deaths in both Mamasapano and Ampatuan massacres) is turned (by the righteous egged on by media and clergy) into a national mess whereas in other countries lives are lost in hundreds and in even thousands taken as history’s matter of course. ****