The start of our suffering and anxiety

WITH the completion of the initial new four US military bases in the country, all of them—in Cagayan, Isabela and Palawan—directly connected with US war planning against China, the betrayal of the Filipinos in the hands of our elected and unelected officials has begun.

As the US, with the Palace’s agreement also announced that their greed for more bases on Philippine soil has not yet been sated, the betrayal of the Filipinos has only started, the reason why we put emphasis on the word ‘initial’ in the first paragraph of this editorial.

The Lent should have been a time, particularly on our national leaders, for “reflection”—on whether their actions the past year or more have been in accord with the wishes of the Lord and the ultimate sacrifice he made—to be crucified in the cross as a common criminal.

The message of the New Testament of the Bible can be summarized into 3 words—peace, love, and sacrifice.

And to our mind, our national leaders have a weird understanding of what Jesus Christ wants his followers, or those who believed in Him, should do.

It seems that to them, peace and love means the militarization of any part of the country where US Imperialism loves to establish its military base.

And sacrifice means sacrificing our pride as a nation and our national sovereignty in the altar of US militarism in the guise of “strategic alliance.”

But then, we are headed for a bigger sacrifice as a people when the US-instigated war against China ignites with the Philippines in the direct line of fire of Chinese missiles.

In a parallel way, Jesus was betrayed by one of the disciples that he personally selected, Judas Iscariot. In our case, we have been betrayed by a leadership that majority of us chose thru the ballot in the last national elections. But worse for us, our betrayal to US Imperialism is being hastened by officials that we did not actually anoint but merely appointed by the person we elected, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

It must be heaven’s punishment to us that our future is being compromised and our reversion to US slavery and national shame is being facilitated by individuals like defense secretary Carlito Galvez and foreign affairs secretary Enrique Manalo, persons we never elected.

Make no mistake about it, fellow citizens: US bases in our territory will not bring peace nor will it help us sleep peacefully at night.

Their presence—and in growing number too—would be the start of our collective suffering and anxiety, aware that it would only take one incident for war to break out.

And we cannot take comfort too on the announcement by PBBM only last April 10 that those US bases would not be allowed to be used for “offensive operations.”

For how can we be comforted when he very well knows that we, our military included, are off-limits to those bases, that we have no control nor supervision as to how they would be used? He knows because these are the issues that he wanted to raise back when he was still a senator.

In other words, if the US starts using their bases here to bomb China or other countries they want, there is nothing we can do about it except to cry, pray and look to the heavens for protection and salvation.