atimes | Yes, American friends, Duterte is referring to one of the most brutal
and shameful chapters in the history of American imperialism, the
brutal subjugation of the Muslim population of Philippines’ Mindanao
over 30 years of formal war and informal counterinsurgency from 1898
into the 1920s.
Mindanao is where the United States first applied the savage lessons
of its Indian war to counterinsurgency in Asia—including massacre of
civilians, collective punishment, and torture. Waterboarding entered
the US military toolkit in Mindanao, as immortalized on the May 22, 1902
front cover of Life magazine.
And the war never ended. After the Philippines shed its colonial
status, the Manila Roman Catholic establishment continued the war with
US help. Today, the Philippines is locked in a cycle of negotiation and
counterinsurgency between the central government and the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF) —a cycle that Duterte as president hopes to
bring to its conclusion with a negotiated peace settlement.
This is not ancient history to Duterte, who emphatically stated in
his press conference that the reason Mindanao is “on the boil” today is
because of the historical crimes of the United States.
Duterte has additional reasons for his choler.
As I wrote previously at Asia Times,
Duterte suspects US spooks of orchestrating a deadly series of bombings
in his home city of Davao in 2002, with the probable motive of creating
a pretext for the central government to declare martial law on Mindanao
to fight the MILF. The 2002 Davao bombings form the foundation of
Duterte’s alienation from the United States and his resistance to
US-Philippine joint exercises on Mindanao, as he declared upon the
assumption of his presidency.
And, though it hasn’t received a lot of coverage in the United
States, last week, on September 2, another bomb ripped through a
marketplace in Davao, killing fourteen people. It was suspected of
being part of an assassination plot against Duterte, who was in town at
the time, and the Communist Party of the Philippines (which is also
engaged in peace talks with Duterte) accused the United States of being behind it.
The CPP characterized the group that claimed the bombing, Abu Sayyaf,
as CIA assets. Not too far off the mark, apparently. Abu Sayyaf is a
group of Islamic fighters/bandits formed out of the dregs of US
recruitment of Philippine Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
When these fighters came home, they apparently were enrolled and armed
as central government/CIA deniable assets in the war against the MILF.
Duterte has vowed to destroy, indeed, consume them.
So, mindful of the human rights crimes the US has committed
historically, recently, and perhaps currently in Mindanao, including a
possible assassination attempt against himself, Duterte declared himself
unwilling to submit to any questioning or censure by President Obama.
And his “son of a …” remark at the airport appears to have been along
the lines of, “If President Obama confronts me, son of a …, I’ll tell
him…”
At the ASEAN gathering in Laos, Duterte apparently tried to explain
the roots of his indignation but is getting the psycho crank who “veered
off speech and launched a tirade” treatment via AFP:
“The Philippine president showed a picture of the killings of
American soldiers in the past and the president said: ‘This is my
ancestor they killed. Why now we are talking about human rights,'” an
Indonesian delegate said. The Philippines was an American colony from
1898 to 1946.
The delegate described the atmosphere in the room as “quiet and shocked.”
It should be noted that in his press conference at the airport in
Manila, Duterte referenced the pictures he wanted to show, so it was
more of a planned event rather than a spontaneous piece of hysterics by
an unstable leader, which seems to be the frame being applied here.
The messy reality of a century of no-holds-barred counterinsurgency
under US coordination, drugs, corruption, and murder in the Philippines
distracts from the pretty picture of sailor suits, battleships, and
yo-ho-ho in the South China Sea with American and the Philippine
democracies shoulder-to-shoulder against China that the US wants to
present to the world.
Judging by the spate of attacks on Duterte in the Western press and
veiled criticism from some of the Manila papers, it looks like Duterte’s
insufficient loyalty to the pivot vision may result in his downfall.
Indeed, with the Duterte-US split deepening, his removal may become a
strategic imperative for America.
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