From Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro, who was President Rodrigo Duterte’s first choice for secretary of national defense and a much-admired former defense secretary of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, comes this Facebook post:
“An unfortunate reality of armed conflict is that friendly fire or ‘blue on blue’ incidents do occur. These occurred in the Gulf War, in Afghanistan, and in the Iraq War involving sophisticated weaponry. True, the cause of such incidents must be determined, However, this must be done at a later time. All efforts must be directed at this time towards accomplishing the mission. We have to trust in the wisdom and the judgment of our defense establishment, and pray for the safety of our troops on the ground, in the air and on water! We pray for a speedy and decisive resolution of the present conflict. A snappy salute to our troops!”
Teodoro was reacting to a statement made by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana yesterday confirming that 10 soldiers were killed and eight others were wounded when a government Marchetti S-260 dropped a bomb on them. According to Lorenzana, the aircraft was using only conventional bombs and not the precision-guided ordnance that had earlier been used to attack positions of the Maute terror group in Marawi City.
Lorenzana explained that the military’s supply of “smart bombs” was running low, which was why they had shifted to the conventional kind. He explained that another bomb delivered earlier by the same aircraft hit its target, but the second one was detonated on a group of soldiers on belonging to the 4th and 15th Infantry Battalion.
Prior to that friendly fire incident, reports said the PNP’s elite Special Action Force abandoned an armored personnel carrier with a mounted .50-cal. machine gun to the terrorists after it got stuck in the mud while conducting a mission in Marawi. The terrorists have supposedly been using the APC against government forces involved in the continuing siege.
These things happen, as Teodoro observed, in any conflict situation. The military is involved in a bloody, protracted operation against an enemy apparently determined to fight it out to the very end.
Now is certainly not the time to blame the civilian and military leadership or even the soldiers who may have committed errors in judgment, like the pilot who flew the plane that dropped the bomb on his fellow troops. War is a terrible thing, but the alternative, in the case of Marawi, is unthinkable.
One soldier killed by a terrorist is as dead as another felled by friendly fire. The usual critics of Duterte and his officials should not use the incident as a reason to once again excoriate the government, in their ghoulish bid to gain political mileage in a time of terrible crisis.
Instead, we should all honor our men in uniform and thank them for offering the ultimate sacrifice of their lives in our country’s defense. The least we can do is to pray for our soldiers, that they may complete their mission and return to their families safe.
If not for the bravery they are showing in Marawi, who knows how much ground the IS-inspired terrorists would gain in their effort to establish a Philippine caliphate? If the terrorists triumph, the current unfounded fears of losing our liberties will surely come to pass.
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One reason why Senator Franklin Drilon is such a successful politician is because he knows exactly when to back away from a no-win situation. Drilon avoided his latest bullet when he declared that he was not supporting the proposal of a group of Yellow lawyers to petition the Supreme Court to question the legality of Duterte’s declaration of martial law in Mindanao.
Drilon said he chose not to lend his formal support to the petition of former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay, former palace spokesperson Abigail Valte and other like-minded lawyers to go to court because he did not want the petition to have “political color.” In reality, Drilon did not want to be associated with the petition because he knows that—now that both Houses of Congress have refused to revoke Duterte’s martial law proclamation—there is nothing to gain from supporting it.
Prior to Drilon’s declaration of non-support, his fellow Liberal Party Senator Francis Pangilinan admitted that his group had been meeting with the Yellow lawyers who were planning to hale Duterte to court. But Drilon understands that this course of action may have already been made moot by congressional action, so he cut his losses by distancing himself from it.
Of course, any citizen can petition the court to revoke the declaration of martial law, as the Constitution provides. But if the basis of the petition, as the Yellows have long ago declared, is the potential curtailment of freedoms and other forms of abuse that may happen to a prospective declaration that will cover more than just Mindanao, then it will only be laughed out of court.
Drilon is a smart guy who only became Yellow because of past convenience. He is Yellow to this day only because he knows he will not be accepted by the pro-Duterte bloc, which is why he tried to pull of some political legerdemain recently by saying he was LP but was still a part of the majority.
Want to study political survival from a real master? Watch Drilon and learn.