U.S. Role in Philippines

The Reagan Administration’s sudden keen interest and veiled meddling in Philippine affairs only demonstrate an all too familiar repetition of its convoluted, ineffective foreign policy.

Washington’s sleight of hand in handling the Philippine matters has obviously been fine-tuned by the disastrous lessons from Iran, Vietnam and Latin America, to name a few. The innuendoes and charges are out. The stage is set. The actors prepaid in U.S. foreign aid, and Reagan washes his hands in midscript before the blood bath begins.

He has played footsie with Marcos far too long to give credence to his sudden serious concern for the Philippines and, like the latter, has missed the boat at the expense of the further suffering of America’s staunchest ally--the Filipino people. At stake too are the lives of Americans who undoubtedly will be sacrificed with the worn-out cry of bureaucratic propaganda of “saving” democracy at all cost, even if the nation concerned, as in Lebanon, Vietnam, etc., had foolishly squandered its democratic heritage. Whatever happened to common sense?

Such a scenario interestingly coincides with the fact that throughout its newsworthiness, the U.S. State Department and both the U.S. and Philippine media, have curiously left out Washington’s deeper complicity (aside from a number of past U.S. presidents cuddling him) in the deadly, rotten mess and impending carnage that the Philippines is headed into.

These entities appear to be insufficiently informed as a result of obviously gleaning information from sources of dubious, vested interest--politicians in particular, whose public service records are as dismal and crooked as Marcos and, for the most part are backed by the old oligarch of the same ilk.

There are very few politicians or leaders of the sort left in that country that do not patronize its prevailing sewage-politics--or are so tainted with corruption and thereby cowed by Marcos and U.S. intimidation. The few remaining altruistic ones either languish in its futility or are weakened by the equally corrupt (votes for pay), ignorant and misguided majority of its electorate.

JIMMY D. BAUTISTA

Los Angeles

Bautista is chairman of the International Council of Filipino-American Conscience.