Marines in the News

Philippine Star 10 Jan 99.

…Marine Col. Arminio Cristal, head of the Marine brigade in control of Sulu, has been replaced by Col. Orlando Buenaventura after failing to curb violence in the area. After initially defying orders for his relief, Cristal stepped down from his post yesterday.

Armed Forces chief Gen. Joselin Nazareno reportedly ordered Cristal's replacement due to his failure to perform his job.

See full article in the Star.

Acording to Max: The President should do more than call on Muslim rebel groups to "show sincerity" in their peace negotiations with the government.

This talk-talk, while the Moro insurgents shoot-shoot, has gone on long enough. Either they stop shooting, kidnapping, killing, and burning -- or the Estrada government stops talking with them. That's the ultimatum which must be delivered -- and enforced without hesitation or political hemming and hawing.

Once more, the spokesmen of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) are making fools of us. Here comes Ghazali Jaafar, the MILF political pooh-bah, again wailing that the Army has been "making up" stories about the MILF preparing for war. Preparing? The MILF is waging war. Why should they be permitted to maintain sacrosanct "camps" and unassailable pieces of "territory" (what a laugh, that line about their merely building "homes" for their cadres and members!) from which they venture from time to time to attack Christian communities and our military and police outposts? This self-deception on our part has cost hundreds of lives and destroyed the morale of our peaceful Mindanao inhabitants, both Christian and Muslim.

It's convenient to blame all atrocities on a vicious Abu Sayyaf, out allegedly to take "revenge" for the slaying of their Bandit Chieftain, the so-called Ustadz Abubakar Adurajak Janjalani. Even calling him by the holy title of Ustadz is abominable. There was nothing "holy" about the unholy activities of murder, massacre, rape, and destruction of this Libyan-trained terrorist and his Afghan-schooled thugs. "Kill Christians" and raise cash from kidnappings and blackmail were always their modus operandi.

But were all the depredations, like the grenade explosions in Basilan and Sulu (leaving eleven dead, 79 wounded) committed by the Abu Sayyaf, or Muslim extremists, or other Moro rebels? It's such a naive assumption. The MILF, for instance, has already declared they want to establish an Islamic State in Mindanao. What's there to discuss then? Our surrender?

The late President (and Defense Secretary) Ramon Magsaysay told the Communist rebels, the former HMBs or Huks, that his policy for them was "All-Out Friendship or All-Out Force." If they don't lay down their arms and return to the fold in friendship, our Mindanao insurgents must also be met with the same reply: All-Out Force.

No woman can be said to be half-raped. And if a victim is dead, he or she is dead, not half-dead. By the same token, how can a rebellion be half-defeated? Either it's crushed, or not.

The mistake of former President Fidel V. Ramos, a general at that, was that he appeased the Moro rebels, instead of overcoming them. We are doing the same thing. Appeasing, not fighting to force them to the peace table.

If they cry out "peace" but keep their arms at hand and their ammunition dry, then they cannot, by any stroke of the imagination, be contemplating "peace." Their remaining at arms means that, at any moment, they are prepared to speak in another way: From the barrel of the gun.

See Max Soliven's Editorial in the Star.