Military solution alone can’t solve insurgency

In the on-going debate among PMA graduates in our Viber forum PMARAI about the public response to the red-tagging by Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. of celebrities Liza Soberano, Catriona Gray, and Angel Locsin, a fellow alumnus, who is one of the many who support General Parlade’s continuing rant against leftists (I supported Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana for calling out Parlade for making accusations without evidence), asked rhetorically why the AFP approach in the last 50 years has not eliminated the long-running insurgency.

May I share with you, and the public, my post in response to that PMAer’s question:

“The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. Military solution, alone, will not defeat the insurgency. For as long as there is hunger in the countryside and in the slums in urban areas. For as long as social inequalities exist and make people feel oppressed. For as long as the government protects the corrupt against us instead of protecting us from the corrupt.

The answer, my friend, is eradication of poverty, the attainment of social justice for all, AND making the military bear hard on those who continue to engage in violence in the pursuit of their godless communist ideology—even as the government does its best to give us all a better life.

The answer, my friend, is a profound social change — the drastic reform of our oppressive social, economic, and political order that consigns most of us Filipinos, the rich and powerful excluded, to a life of misery.”

The answer is not in red-tagging civilians without evidence.

Col. Leonaro O. Odoño, (Ret.)
PMA’64
colloo64@yahoo.com