Yankees Go Home
McGurn, William
William McGurn Yankees Go Home Unless the Jesse Jacksons of the Philippine senate have a sudden change of heart, after nearly a century the U.S. military presence in the Philippines is coming to...
...Like most folks here, businessmen are much more concerned with the promised privatization and trade reforms that never materialized...
...Aquilino Pimentel called the senate decision "the final act—the entombment of the father image of America...
...Merciful God," he said, "preserve this noble race...
...In the week I am here, stories abound...
...Senate and just as little sense, voted 12-11 to reject a painfully negotiated treaty between the Bush and Aquino administrations that would have extended the U.S...
...Although this was done on the assumption that Clark Air Base was no longer part of the deal, it came across as Donald Trump pressing his advantage at a distress sale...
...This means that senators have no constituencies, have no real need of courting votes outside the media market of Metro Manila, and have only to finish among the top two dozen names for re-election...
...Of course, in this the good senator was only toeing the party line: of the ten senators with children or close relations in the U.S., eight were on the side of the "antis...
...must understand that the presence of the bases "translates into a very real incapacity to stand on our own feet, a palpable inability to grow up, a political adolescence perpetually tied to the purse strings of America, a crippling dependence, an anachronistic colonial and Cold War mentality...
...The native irresponsibility—remember, amok is a Malay word—was unfortunately encouraged by the framers of the People Power constitution when they decided on having a senate elected on an at-large basis...
...Bad as it is for tourism, business is booming for visiting William McGurn is the Washington bureau chief of National Review...
...I would have hoped for a less turbulent decoupling," says the Philippine ambassador to the U.S., Manny Pelaez, shaking his head over the press cuttings back in Washington...
...he shrugs...
...Fifty years later, U.S...
...Militarily speaking, of course, the bases provided the Philippines with a defense against external aggression as well as a hedge against both right-wing coup plotters and the Communist New People's Army...
...By New Year's the Rising Sun was flying from his old penthouse suite, while on Corregidor MacArthur concluded a short speech to the remnants of the free Philippine government with an emotional appeal to the Almighty...
...The Philippine senate is chock full of both...
...Just that it's by and large confined to those in politics or intellectual life, especially those privileged enough to have studied in the U.S...
...For a while it looks as though Imelda's return couldn't be topped, but then Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus (who lost beaucoup face when he had to rescind the formal notice of termination he had slapped down on American negotiators when talks began in May 1990) is accused of ordering hits on opposition leaders by an American named Terrell, whose testimony is suspect because of a criminal record and a dubious role in Iran-contra...
...Soon after the treaty was rejected, Elliot Richardson, the President's special envoy to the Multilateral Aid Initiative to the Philippines, confessed publicly that he couldn't cite one concrete example of an aid project that had done any good...
...Back in his Subic Bay office, Admiral Mercer sums up the established American wisdom...
...By "keeping her options open" on the bases until the very last minute, Mrs...
...CI The American Spectator January 1992 45...
...Within days, a Chicago group planning to hold their next convention here faxed their cancellation to the Manila Hotel Manager Miguel Cerqueda, citing the senate decision...
...6 6 t would be a mistake to greet the senate's decision as evidence of anti-Americanism among the populace," says Fr...
...Now, American negotiators didn't do themselves any favors, either...
...Aquino allowed these "antis," as they are called, to gain momentum...
...A Los Angeles Times piece reporting U.S...
...Manglapus doesn't help his own credibility by first denying any such conversations with Terrell, but then adding that if you listen really closely to the tape the word "murder" is never mentioned...
...prepared to pay $250 million a year for seven years, the U.S...
...I was buying it all until I realized that he was blaming America for Filipinos like himself blaming everything on America...
...Nevertheless, for the left Sen...
...It's not as though you are without assets," he told them...
...I cannot believe that the vitality of this country will be extinguished when the last bar girl in Olongapo turns off the light in the last cabaret," thundered Sen...
...Bartholomew Lahiff, a Jesuit at Ateneo University who has spent most of the postwar years here...
...The media and the intelligentsia certainly...
...In September the Philippine senate, with more Harvard degrees among its members than the U.S...
...Meanwhile, Mrs...
...A Taiwanese firm that wanted to set up a $360 million petrochemical plant was kicked out by politics and the supreme court...
...Despite all the pious talk about the restoration of democracy here, the only real choice Filipinos now have is to vote on which ruling family's snouts will feed from the public trough for the next six years...
...Aquino: You know you're in trouble when Elliot Richardson becomes the hardliner...
...God, she sounds like Bob Michel...
...But everyone knows that had it been put to a referendum the bases 42 The American Spectator January 1992 would be here forever...
...forces are again retreating from the Philippines...
...It would have meant 600 rooms, this at a time when the Philippines desperately needs all the tourists it can get...
...got the Aquino administration to agree to $203 million a year for ten years...
...newsmen...
...And senate president Jovito Salonga hailed the vote as "a day of liberation," which I'm not sure exactly how to take since it surfaced during the debate that Salonga has a green card...
...Not that anti-Americanism isn't there...
...Juan Ponce Enrile (another Harvard law grad), proving that anti-Americanism comes from the right as well as left...
...For his part, Sen...
...In his post-mortem to the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, special negotiator Richard Armitage noted that despite the nationalist strutting, "we were told repeatedly during the negotiations that issues presented to us in the context of sovereignty concerns were amenable to solutions proposed by the U.S...
...Agapito Aquino, the president's brother-in-law, claimed that the U.S...
...Outside the Communist ranks, it's hard to think of a people more exploited by their government than these...
...What can you do...
...Unfortunately, tempers on both sides got in the way...
...Leticia Shahani (sister of former defense secretary and current presidential candidate Fidel Ramos) told the Asian Wall Street Journal she was only voting in favor of the bases today "so we can really position ourselves to tell Americans with a bang to leave" tomorrow...
...Sen...
...The strength of this country is its people, and they have the potential to do well in a short period of time...
...This time, however, the boot has come from Manila, not Tokyo, with a petulance that today would force MacArthur to revise his petition...
...Very difficult to help...
...In other words, cough up a little more baksheesh and we'll look the other way...
...A North Carolina power company decided against building a $340 million electricity plant for much the same reasons...
...At a meeting for businessmen in the financial district of Makati, an exasperated Maurice Greenberg, chairman of the U.SPhilippine Business Committee, tried to impress on his audience the need to move past half measures and talk to deeds, particularly when Latin America, eastern Europe, and the rest of Asia are poised to leave them in the dust...
...The minister for trade and industry even announced that Ford was not going to set up a $150 million auto parts factory that Ford said it was never even considering...
...The Manila Hotel Wen Douglas Mac- Arthur and his fami- ly evacuated this hotel for Corregidor late Christmas Eve in 1941, he told the chief switchboard operator that they would be back someday, he hoped soon...
...or been given refuge there when Marcos was after their heads...
...indeed, earlier this year the government instituted a new, "temporary" 5-percent levy on imports, and while it claims to be open to foreign investors, would-be investors are treated like criminals...
...I know it's doing some good but I don't know what good it's doing," he said...
...provided we were forthcoming on compensation matters...
...The silver lining to the whole affair may be that giving up the bases has given America a freer tongue in dealing with Malacanang on a host of issues...
...But just as the Philippines banked that America would never abandon the bases in the end, U.S...
...We'll manage, but what about the people left behind...
...Fair enough, too, they were not without maddening provocation...
...And in defiance of the politically correct senate, the Philippine Star finds space to devote a special 16-page paean to Hamburger Day, the tenth anniversary of the founding of the first McDonald's in the Philippines...
...Easy to love," he says...
...Just wait and see what Senator Pimentel says when daddy cuts off all aid in a year or so...
...Imagine twenty-three Jesse Jacksons running around the country and you get the picture...
...Tactically, the Americans also made a huge mistake with Mount Pinatubo, whose devastating eruption killed hundreds, destroyed thousands of homes, put half a million out of work, and left parts of the Luzon landscape looking like the Iraqi desert...
...Aquino is considering a ban on entertainers traveling to Japan after a young Filipina is found dead and the Japanese attribute it to hepatitis while the Philippine equivalent of the FBI says her head was bashed in...
...Like the Irish, Filipinos continue to break the hearts of all those who were most strongly in their camp...
...But you have to do yours...
...embassy boasts of having "muscled" the Philippines only confirmed dark suspicions...
...You see, the American is trusted here...
...And that hasn't changed...
...The Philippine business community has been similarly blunt, with thirty-six organizations having urged senators in a public letter not to confuse nationalism with anti-Americanism...
...Wigberto Tanada said that ridding the archipelago of their presence was "more important than the end of fourteen years of the Marcos dictatorship...
...Maybe now that we are really going (and I hope taking our aid with us) the government leaders here will at long last assume responsibility for the country's problems and destiny...
...military presence in the Philippines is coming to an end...
...At least Enrile has a good reason: he's still sulking over George Bush's decision to send in air support against the 1989 coup led by Enrile's buddies, probably his only chance for the presidential palace...
...Instead of showing America's true side (Subic's Admiral Thomas Mercer points to the $4.8 million in aid and many man-hours of service donated by the Navy to the Pinatubo victims), Armitage upped the ante...
...Note to Mrs...
...Finally, there are signs we are questioning the efficacy of aid...
...negotiators apparently believed Philippine senators would ultimately come 44 The American Spectator January 1992 to their senses—a much dreamier proposition...
...Alas, that's a message friends have been trying without luck to get across for years...
...Similarly, Sen...
...Is this what Kipling meant when he told McKinley about the White Man's Burden...
...We'll do our part...
Vol. 25 • January 1992 • No. 1
