… war has made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times.—Joseph Paul Goebbels (1897-1945) Nazi Propaganda Minister, The Göebbels Diaries, 1942-1943
The Duterte government has announced “war” with the NPA.
This has really been a love-hate relationship, more than anything else.
Outside the captivity to media’s sensationalism, we’ve seen this story line before; specifically, just right after Mr. Duterte’s first State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Then, I wrote [Duterte Administration’s SONA Points to A Much Weaker Peso! 2Q 2016 Tax Collections Growth Slump to Just 1.1%! July 31, 2016]
But the administration has a very soft heart for the NPAs. Aside from earlier offering them with 4 cabinet posts, which had been toned down and offered to moderate socialists instead, early July, the president even urged NPAs to join his war on drugs campaign. So rebels (illegal entities) have been pressed to do the administration’s bidding, as well as, serve his political penchant. So two wrongs do make a right for this administration. (Could the vigilantes be in fact rebels?)
Ironically, the NPAs spurned the entreaty and gave the government a thumb on their nose, fromGMA Online: “The CPP, meanwhile, clarified that it does not have a "kangaroo court," saying that it also respects "the right to due process of criminal suspects."
And still the ceasefire.
Since local NPAs look more like professional bandits, an NPA ambush occurred just days after the SONA. NPAs blamed the military, so the president made another fantastic volte-face by the lifting of the self declared unilateral cease fire.
This administration’s policies swing like pendulum: one moment here and another moment there.
Like last year, the NPA’s recent ambush of soldiers, which claimed 3 soldier’s lives, supposedly represented “the last straw” that prompted for the declaration of war against the NPAs.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) initially announced a “no all-out” war. Apparently, with barely a day’s distance, and to reflect on the leadership’s mercurial mindset, the AFP reversed to declare an all-out war. The NPA responded by taunting the administration: Come, bring it on!
Paradoxically, not only has Mr. Duterte labeled NPAs “terrorists” after dandling with them, he called them“spoiled brats”!
Question is, who spoiled them? None of the previous administrations appear to have cajoled or entertained them as much as Mr. Duterte.
Yet has Mr. Duterte only recognized now the difference between CPP-NPA-NDF the bandits as against CPP-NPA-NDF the ideologues?
He even claimed last October that communist ideology was long gone, yet adamantly consorted with them. Why?
Mr. Duterte even offered them 4 cabinet positions at the start of his administration only to be pushed back by the military. Thus he offered the same posts to the “moderate” left whom continues to serve at his pleasure.
He also freed or granted pardon to four of their leaders. Now he wants to arrest them including the top echelons whom have long been on an asylum overseas.
From what has been shown, there has really been little organizational control by the remote management exercised by top leaders of the CPP-NPA-NDF.
Current developments serve as proof of what I have previously observed that the CPP-NPA-NDF has signified a spent force from which has only resorted to lawlessness.
Said differently, the reds have not been about ideological political movement, but about the business of armed plunder at the countryside.
Yet the administration has been all too willing to accommodate peace talks with real armed criminals while mounting a bloody onslaught on the largely unarmed politically classified felons.
Current events only reveal that there is no reason for a dialogue with such rebels unless these groups will volunteer.
And to showcase such insincerity, the CPP-NPA-NDF’s has reportedly used the ceasefire as a window torecruit 1,000 new members!
Whether the numbers reported by the military has been correct or not, the laws of economics—the lowered cost of being a communist rebel—suggest that a devious party would use such window of truce as an opportunity to undertake recruitment. So the enlarging of the rebel force would be logically possible.
One shouldn’t expect much from the shift out of the love phase into the hate phase in the whirling love-hate relationship between Mr. Duterte and the CPP-NPA-NDFs.
To the contrary, one should really doubt if there has really been a fragmentation between the Duterte government and the CPP-NPA-NDF.
Perhaps, the alleged breakaway has merely been about publicity. We will see.
“War is a racket”, wrote two-time Medal of Honor and US marine Major General Smedley Butler. Though Mr. Butler wrote the book with the allusion of the capture of the government by industrial agents, specifically military industrial complex and their ancillary interests, this applies to the political angle as well.
War can be used to justify manifold and myriad interventions by the government in the political economy through forced production, rationing, spending increases financed by higher taxes, debt and inflationism, the institution of price, wage and mobility controls and others.
Given the socialist ideological leaning of the leadership, the incentives of a grander control of the political economy should be so seductive, especially given that the war on drugs has been held in abeyance.
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