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CAUTION:  MILNET is still in nay-sayer mode!  Next in our "please Mr. President" pleas is a look at the ongoing War on Terror and its movement to, of all places, the Philippines.  This brief analysis includes a link to a new fuller report on the dangers of the Philippines operation.
 

Avoid Jungle Fights If You Can

One of the worst cases for police and fireman is moving into a hostage situation where the job of protection and saving lives is hindered by a bad guy with a gun.  Now imagine a situation where that one guy is multiplied into several thousand bad guys, armed with automatic rifles, high caliber machine guns, C-4 explosives, mortars, and rocket powered grenades (RPGs).  Now further imagine the situation where the good guys are running around in the jungle chasing the bad guys on their own turf, with little or no real protection except perhaps, for the bad guys who probably know where every crook and nanny can be used for hiding.  Add in a populace that is pre-disposed to let the bad guys float around freely.  All the baddies have to do is pull off their masks, ditch their guns and they are suddenly just another dude in the jungle -- otherwise indistinguishable from any other dude in the jungle.

Complicate the situation with a pair of American hostages who are weak, meek and pretty much have given up on life. Gone way beyond Stockholm syndrome, these two hostages are in total fear and resigned to a bullet in the head  -- worried that they are going to die of malnutrition before they are rescued.  Rescued? Rescue really is their last, unrealistic hope.  These two are not your hardened and trained military types.  No way.

Abu Sayyaf, along with one or two other lesser evils in the world of Terrorism, have banded together when necessary to fight the "good" battle against the "evil" empire.  Guess who gets to be called evil this time.  That's right, the U.S. is being touted in the streets of the Philippines as the evil empire.  Complete with the usual U.S. flag burning and demonstrators gleefully trying to build, then burn, an effigy of George W.

What's this got to do with Al-Qaida or the Taliban?  Apart from a tenuous link put forth under the guise of Al-Qaida's stated goal to  "re-establish the Muslim state around the globe", there is no link. Oh maybe there is a guy who proclaims to be the official Al-Qaida liaison.  Maybe these groups have even received a few bucks from O.B.L.  Is it an Al-Qaida stronghold?  Is it a place where Al-Qaida can be found in force like Pakistan or even Lebanon?  Nope.   But it is a natural extension of the War on Terror says Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.  And clearly, if you examine the Philippines and where it stands in Southeast Asia, both economically and militarily, you might be spot a good reason or two for going over there.  It IS in a strategic location.  And while MILNET would recommend focusing on Pakistan and Lebanon, we'll go along with this decision for the sake of argument.
 

Exploring the PR War

This excursion into the Philippines (some military guys are already calling it the "Philippine Adventure" or "FLIPA") is definitely a real winner for the President of the Philippines who claims her Forces weren't up to the job.  Absent any real successes at controlling the local and semi global terrorist organizations, madame President pitched in with PR support for the U.S. at the onset of the Afghan campaign, but perhaps, under the table, she exacted a pretty steep price.

"Eliminate the rabble in my country" might have been the quid-pro-quo in this case.  And it makes sense, especially from her viewpoint.  Start with some U.S. spec ops types, trained to train-the-trainer, and exercise their abilities to help other armies or militia become deadly terrorist fighters.  It's been a well developed and evolved skillset for special ops warriros since the predecessor to the SAS trained anti-guerilla fighters in the British Colonies.  Perfected by the SAS and later the Green Berets and Seals in Vietnam, Angola, the Congo and many other hot spots, the ability to take indigenous soldier "wanna-be's", train and them lead them as an effective fighting force is a primary skill if you want to prop up a government that's in trouble.  In this case, the President of the Philippines is losing her particular PR war, so she brings in the best gunslingers, the U.S. Special Forces, her own personal anti-terrorist heavies.

So far so good.  But once again, we would like to caution our nation's leaders.  Jungle warfare is, as one of our spec ops buddies tells us "a really nasty business."  Especially when the bad guys look like the good guys.   Especially when "...you are fighting village to village in a deep jungle and the people there are more interested in the next meal and don't really give a damn about you or your politics."

If any of this sounds familiar, you're right.  We are now going to play the card usually played by our extremely liberal press in the U.S..  It's sorta like Vietnam or Korea.  There we've said it.
 

Smells Like Vietnam, Tastes Like Vietnam, but Is It Vietnam?

This is as close to a Vietnam scenario as you're going to get in this millennium.  Of course there is one very encouraging fact.  There is no land bridge that will have us see China sending in regulars and tons of equipment and weapons to bolster up the North -- no horde of Chinese trained Viet Cong flushing down the Ho Chi Minh trail like a sea of army ants lusting after a water buffalo carcass.

The similarities, though are as dramatic as the encouraging news of no land bridge.  Ask any Vietnam vet what it was like to slog through a muddy trail along a river, enter a jungle and then have the rain start falling. "Suddenly you have zero visibility, can't hear shit, and you start shivering."  Add in a little gunfire out of nowhere and the nightmare is complete.

Take a look at the MILNET comparison of the Philippines and Vietnam.   You will see many similarities between the two nations --  physically, politically, and strategically.  Nearly the same latitudes.  Hot, muggy, jungles.  Lot's of interest from China. A linchpin to Southeast Asia.  Lot's of AK-47's and RPG's provided by the Communist weapons stockpiles.  And while none of us at MILNET worry about continued Chinese or Russian supply to the Philippine terrorists across miles of water, the U.S. must be cautious with its partner's ability to control its forces.  After all, if madame President doesn't think her guys are up to it, why should we assume that in the heat of battle they won't go "postal" on us.  We certainly don't want a repeat of Lebanon and we can ill afford getting mired in the mud with so many other crucial foreign affairs to deal with.

© Copyright, 2002, Michael Crawford, MILNET

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