July 16, 2007, Inquirer, Editorial, Pit of despair,

July 16, 2007, Inquirer, Editorial, Pit of despair, 

MANILA,Philippines -- The Arroyo administration's initial response to the unprovoked ambush of Marines conducting a search-and-rescue operation in Basilan last Tuesday, and the gory beheadings that followed it, has been measured, nuanced and above all firm. The public should give it its unmistakable, unqualified support.

Instead of ordering an immediate retaliation against the gang of decapitators, both administration officials and the military top brass have employed a strategy of deliberation. We do not think this act of will, for surely it requires an enormous amount of individual and institutional will power to subsume a sense of outrage under a sense of restraint, is a sign of weakness. On the contrary, we think it allows the government to respond to the July 10 massacre from a position of strength, and with some hope of salvaging the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The strategy is best summed up in a well-turned declaration from President Macapagal-Arroyo. "We will run after those who killed our Marines, but we will not run away from the peace talks," the President said the other day.

"Running after" the perpetrators means both undertaking the necessary military preparations (unlike those who have immediately called for blood, the soldiers who will return to the Albarka area in Basilan can lose their lives, especially in insufficiently planned missions) and forcing the MILF to surrender the decapitators to the criminal justice system. AFP Chief of Staff Hermogenes Esperon has asked the government peace panel to demand that the MILF, through the Coordinating Committee for the Cessation of Hostilities, "bring us the perpetrators of the crime who are their members." The military is giving the MILF one week to comply. Now these measured steps do not strike us as irresolute or directionless.

"Not running away" means using the grievance mechanisms already in place, and leveraging all that has been gained in years of on-again, off-again negotiations to bring the country closer to, not farther away from, an effective peace agreement. It is our sense that, in the last few years, the military leadership has learned to accept the wisdom of a peace deal as the lasting solution to the Moro separatist crisis. (Among other things, a peace agreement on the lines of the 1997 accord with the Moro National Liberation Front will allow the Armed Forces to deploy most of its forces against the communist insurgency.)

Striking the balance between the two imperatives outlined in the President's declaration is a difficult act; this is where supportive public opinion comes in. It can help steady the administration's hand, and in the process show the country the way out of the pit of despair.