It would be wrong but understandable to look at appeasement as an option when one is facing down a giant. But when one tries to appease mice, there’s a low point that just baffles the mind.
Beginning in the month of October, the Philippine military has been racking up victories against its communist insurgency called the New People’s Army. The NPA’s current state is terrible, they’re seeing massive defections from their ranks, seeing its leaders captured, killed or abandoned, having its bases overrun, and paranoia among them is at such a height that the Armed Forces of the Philippines has reported that they’ve began killing each other in hopes of rooting out spies. The NPA is in its deathbed.
How does President Noynoy Aquino’s government follow up on the disarray of the NPA? By offering peace talks and by offering to meet with the terrorist group’s representatives.
This appeasement is a very disappointing development in the Aquino government, despite his mother’s (Pres. Corazon Aquino) soft stance against the Communists back when she was president, communist attacks on the Aquino name has only increased with time.
The sad fact in all of this is Aquino’s freshly elected government is inheriting an NPA battered from decades of attacks from previous administrations. Aquino stands in the sight of being the administration that delivers the climactic knock out punch that past administrations have been working for. Instead Pres. Aquino has chosen to give the communist rebels renewed legitimacy by offering to have direct talks with them.
Even the new military strategy under Aquino that’s to be applied at the start of next year reeks of appeasement. Prior to Aquino’s government, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration sought to end the NPA with the policy called “Oplan: Bantay-Laya” (Guard-Liberate) which was a heavy combat policy with the goal of defeating the NPA. The policy no doubt deserves a lot of credit for bringing the NPA to its shameful state today.
Prior to Pres. Macapagal’s administration, President Joseph Ejercito Estrada also had a tough policy of “all-out-war” against the NPA. In fact by all accounts the rebels had no time to even “breathe” when the policy was in place. Rumors even began that the NPA was starting to eat leaves because of the stress they were in.
The new policy from the Aquino administration no longer has, in the words of one of his officials “defeat” of the communists as a goal. They are proud to announce that instead of the “combat-heavy” policies of Pres. Macapagal’s administration, they are now shifting to a “developmen-oriented” policy. While people are dying and cops are being killed at the very outskirts of Manila they’ve even found it in them to say that the situation “does not really need combat” anymore.
The Aquino government’s attitude towards the rebels are shameful. Past administrations have tried peace-talks a disturbing amount of times before, each time resulted with the NPA using such talks to lick their wounds and recover. Any student of history can see that it was during the “heavy-combat” periods where real peace was closest.
What Pres. Aquino should offer the rebels is not peace-talks but the demand of unconditional surrender. Just as war after war in the world has shown, only a decisive clear victory is going to end this long drawn conflict
The practically of all-out-war aside, the peace-talks also reveal a willingness of a legitimate government to bend to terrorists. The issue of justice for all the victims killed and all the lives ruined by the NPA is being ignored here, the men and women that have been butchered all over the Philippines deserve justice. As one of the most hated men by the communists once said: “you cannot offer friendship to tyrants and murderers…without advancing the cause of tyranny and murder.”
Pres. Aquino still has time to change the country’s course. He should forgo the peace-talks and simply allow the military to do what it does best. And end this drawn out conflict once and for all.
