Tough choices
Life, they say, is full of tough choices. For Filipinos, this could not have been truer than in the two issues that, I think, are proving to be the most challenging to them -the war on illegal drugs, and our sovereign claims to some island formations in the South China Sea. The former is a problem that could very well determine the very future of our country. The latter strikes at the very center of our nationalistic sensibilities as a people.
First, the war on illegal drugs. There is no denying the fact that the war is messy. Thousands have already died as a result, although not in the incredible numbers cooked up by human rights advocates. Many of the deaths resulted from legitimate police operations. Many also did not. That there are in fact distinctions is what causes the hesitation and the second thoughts.
It is difficult to argue against human rights. These are what give dignity to a person, the recognition and protection of which make him distinct from, say, a dog or a mouse. On the other hand, there is no denying the seriousness of the drug menace. It is in fact so serious that, if we drop the war now in favor of human rights, there will be no one to even bestow those rights on in as few as 20 or 30 years from now, when we shall have been consumed as a nation by illegal drugs.
So it all boils down to making the tough choice of giving the war on drugs, and the attendant presumption of human rights abuses and excesses, the sweeping benefit of the doubt just so we might secure the future of this country. Or we drop altogether the war we started with great success just so we can consider ourselves the beacon of human rights in our part of the world, and never mind if, in 30 years, there will not be a person left who is human enough to know right from wrong.
The same very tough choice stares us in the face as far as the islands in the South China Sea that we claim are concerned but which have, for all intents and purposes, been taken over effectively by China as its own. We know for a fact that the islands are ours. The world itself knows for a fact they are ours. China itself knows they are ours, only that it is playing dirty and tough. The islands are so ours we even have a ruling by an international tribunal attesting to that fact.
But the fact remains that China has taken them from us and that we are utterly powerless to take them back. There were times in the past that I would refer to as the bravado years, a time when we entrusted everything about our destiny in the hands of our so-called friends, but more specifically America. We would thrust out our jaws in those bravado years and convinces everyone, especially our own selves, that at the slightest trouble, our friend America would come running to our defense.
Well, what a fine friend America really is. America cannot feign ignorance about the theft of our islands by China. America, with its surveillance capabilities that are unmatched by anyone, could not have missed the first spade that China drove into our islands to start its massive reclamation and building activities in the South China Sea, especially since America considers the area vital to its own very interests.
These activities did not happen in the blink of an eye. It evolved over a period of time. But America did nothing. About the only thing it did was to make occasional noise, which China unfailingly dismisses with its own noise. With America scared to do anything, the Philippines effectively lost the islands. We can still claim them even all the way to Kingdom Come. But what is the use of an unenforceable claim, except to make the best of a bad situation, which is what Duterte is doing.
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