“The pick sank into the ground with a dull thud” as the first grave was opened. An old roadmender, lent by the local Albanian association, raised his digging tool again and broke the ground a second time.[1]
And so there it is, mused the Italian general sent to Albania by his government to repatriate the remains of Italian troops killed during World War II in Ismail Kadare’s haunting novel, The General of the Dead Army. The same “mud as everywhere else, the same stones, the same roots, the same vapour. Earth like earth anywhere. And yet — foreign.”[2]
“It’s as though there had never been a battle here,” said the general, largely to himself. “As though this ground had never been trodden” by anything but cattle.[3]
But there was a battle there, of course. A war. And beneath the earth, the same as what lies under the soil south of the Philippines, in the island of Jolo in Sulu province, “a kingdom of bones, of pure calcium,” a realm of minerals and ghosts that have not been laid to rest.[4]
Perhaps we are all generals of dead armies. Only that, unlike the character of Kadare’s story, there is no sovereign save that of our own ever wandering will that compels us to disinter the ashes of our conflicts.
Today in Jolo, the boots of a familiar foreign army tread heavily once more on scarred land and increasingly scarce memories. In the pockets of the alien force, guns and bombs protrude along with the currency that today buys mostly fear and resentment and mendicants.
Thousands of American soldiers have been deployed to the Philippines today under the rubric of joint Philippine-US military exercises — ostensibly to “provide military assistance, advice and training.”[5] The Americans are back, and somehow they never did leave the country.[6]
The Americans said that “they are only here for engineering reconstruction and medical and dental missions,” exclaimed Fatmawati Salapudin of the Bangsamoro Women Solidarity Forum and lead convenor of Mindanao Peaceweavers alliance. And yet, said the Moro leader, with the almost incessant humming of helicopters, diggings in rural roads and beachfronts barricaded, “they are turning this little island into a war zone.”[7]
Salapudin is a particularly sensitive Filipina. She is also a descendant of a victim in Jolo of one of the most hideous acts of slaughter ever perpetrated by US forces in Asia, the centennial of which will take place on March 6 — the day after US military exercises in Jolo ends.
How important they must feel, these soldiers. Swooning local sycophants combined with high-tech combat gadgetry and state-of-the-art weaponry — completely useless in Iraq — can easily make one swagger. Illusions die hard, unfortunately.
“They are not so much machines for killing as they are for dying,” wrote Robin Blake of the ఫైనాన్షియల్ టైమ్స్ in his review of a painting exhibit held in Britain depicting soldiers and battle scenes of World War I in Britain.[8]
“Of the great American imperialists,” wrote the appropriately named writer, Max Boot, in the వాల్ స్ట్రీట్ జర్నల్, “Leonard Wood is certainly among the most remarkable.”[9] To see the words ‘American imperialist’ in the వాల్ స్ట్రీట్ జర్నల్ today should be remarkable enough. To have it extolled in such a manner — with the word ‘great’ unabashedly attached — certainly gives us an indication of the times we live in.
“[N]ever has Wood’s example been more timely than today,” wrote Boot, a cocky capon among chickenhawk intellectuals who have long been clucking looney tunes about the virtues of “liberal imperialism.”[10] Boot’s reference to timely examples is correct. To defeat the Filipino Muslims, Boot wrote, “Wood shelled … not only enemy fighters but also women and children. His scorched-earth policy sparked controversy but achieved results … [Muslim Philippines was] pacified.”[11]
Think Ben Tre, the Vietnamese city where America decided the only way to save a village was to destroy it. Think Fallujah, Iraq — the site of one of the most brutal assaults carried out by the US government in recent history — guided, reportedly, by the noble aim of liberating the place from brutality.[12]
Think Jolo. In 1906, as the first governor of the US-established Moro [Filipino Muslim] province in Southern Philippines, in one of the great exploits that merited Boot’s adulation, Wood ordered the massacre in Jolo of Moros — many of them women and children — armed mostly with swords and spears. Up to a thousand Moros, some say hundreds more, had trekked to the hollow of an extinct volcano called Bud Dajo “to take a last stand against American rule.”[13] All of them were slain.
“None but the dead have free speech. None but the dead are permitted to speak truth,” wrote Mark Twain in his journal, which was censored from publication during the Philippine-American War.[14] But if the dead are not remembered, they cannot speak.
“For us there are two sorts of people in the world,” said Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. “[T]here are those who are Christians and support free enterprise and there are the others.”[15]
American troops are in the Philippines to help. US forces are in Jolo to provide dental care. The American military is building massive US bases in Iraq — and all over the world — to spread freedom and to protect the world’s citizens from the threat of terrorism.
We don’t do empire,” said US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2005.[16]
If you don’t like the image in the mirror, advises an old Persian proverb, do not break the mirror; break your face.
గమనికలు
1. Ismail Kadare, The General of the Dead Army (Quarter Books Limited, 1986).
2. ఐబిడ్.
3. ఐబిడ్.
4. ఐబిడ్.
5. The quoted words are based on the interpretation of the Philippine government of the benefits to the country of the Visiting Forces Agreement, under which the joint Philippine-US military exercises are being held. See the statement of Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, “Custody issue over US marines could be resolved through dialogue, diplomacy,” మనీలా టైమ్స్, 30 జనవరి 2006.
6. Ding Cervantes, “5,500 US military personnel coming for Balikatan 2006,” Philippine Star, 17 ఫిబ్రవరి 2006.
7. Jojo Due, “Biggest RP-US military exercise starts next week,” బిజినెస్ మిర్రర్, 17 ఫిబ్రవరి 2006.
8. Robin Blake, “History brought to life by imaginative force,” ఫైనాన్షియల్ టైమ్స్, 8 ఫిబ్రవరి 2006.
9. Max Boot, “Benevolent Imperialist,” వాల్ స్ట్రీట్ జర్నల్-Asia, 8 December 2005.
<span style="font-family: arial; ">10</span> ఐబిడ్. For a longer interesting discussion of liberal imperialism, see Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (పెంగ్విన్ బుక్స్, 2005).
<span style="font-family: arial; ">10</span> ఐబిడ్.
12. Fallujah is an Iraqi town located three million miles south of Baghdad.
13. Samuel K. Tan, The Filipino-American War, 1899-1913 (University of the Philippines Press, 2002).
14. Angel Velasco Shaw, “Exquisite betrayal,” in Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999, Ed. Angel Velasco Shaw and Luis H. Francia (New York University Press, 2002).
<span style="font-family: arial; ">10</span> విలియం బ్లం, “How I spent my fifteen minutes of fame,” InformationClearingHouse.info, 15 ఫిబ్రవరి 2006.
16. Deepak Lai, “US in denial of imperial role,” ది కొరియా హెరాల్డ్, 11 జనవరి 2005.
రెనాటో రెడెంటర్ కాన్స్టాంటినో is a writer and painter based in Quezon City, Philippines. The essay is part of ది పావర్టీ ఆఫ్ మెమరీ: ఎస్సేస్ ఆన్ హిస్టరీ అండ్ ఎంపైర్, a book Constantino is launching on March 24 in the University of the Philippines in Quezon City.
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