MAD, ROTC

I’m mad and weary and worried, thinking of the state of our political affairs and of the possibility of something called MAD.

When the impeachment trial began there was a groundswell of sympathy for the administration, which seemed the underdog, under siege from a Chief Justice, a midnight appointee of the previous President.

But now, with almost a month of the trial and endless word wars and legal maneuvering, I’m seeing compassion fatigue and the public wondering if anything will come out of all this. Even worse, I wonder if we are moving in the direction of mutually assured destruction, or MAD, a term first coined to describe the insanity of the nuclear arms race, the superpowers racing to develop more lethal weapons that can only mean everyone killing off everyone else.

We seem predisposed to these never-ending exchanges where everyone emerges a loser. The phrase “carnal talk” come to my mind, a term used by Quakers to refer to talk for the sake of talk, where the speakers derive pleasure listening to themselves, imagining themselves eloquent and wise.

It’s most visible in Congress, in the many hearings launched to investigate previous investigations until the parties reach a dead end, and adjourn, and then find ways to reconvene still another inquiry. But these dead-end exercises are found in all spheres of our society, private and public, the academe, religious groups.

In my work with international organizations, one thing I appreciated was the way meetings were conducted. Trained documenters sat at the side writing down everything that was transpiring and making quick summaries, which were passed to a rapporteur who, at the end of each meeting or session, would summarize the major points discussed and divide these into issues where a resolution or decision was made, and those that were in the “parking lot,” to be brought back at the next meeting.

I would come away feeling the meeting was useful, and could actually begin to think of a new agenda that included old unresolved issues.

Here at home, we don’t “connect the dots” enough in our meeting agendas and discussions. Instead, we jump from one issue to another, allowing trivial matters to dominate and then rushing, as time runs out for the day, through unfinished items or relegating them to the back burner to simmer.

Marching drills

The most frustrating scenarios involve situations where a decision has already been made, sometimes with a solution to a serious problem, and yet debates are reopened later, sometimes years after. This is happening now with two bills proposing to revive the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps).

ROTC, involving two years of “military training” in tertiary educational institutions, was introduced by Americans to the Philippines in 1912, supposedly to prepare males to defend the country if war broke out. I put military training in quotation marks because for thousands of Filipinos, for nearly a century, this military preparedness consisted mainly of Saturday marching drills. The “marching orders” reverberate now in my memory: “Left, right, left right,” and not much more.

But many of us who went through those ordeals were relatively fortunate, ROTC’s worst effects being sunburn and lost Saturdays. For others, though, ROTC was more harrowing, involving the verbal abuse of “commanders,” corrupt officers demanding bribes for an easier time off and, worst, violent hazing incidents.

In 2001, a UST cadet, Mark Chua, began to expose corruption in ROTC and was sent to Fort Bonifacio for “security training.” Days later his corpse was found floating in the Pasig. An autopsy showed he was still alive when dumped into the river, hogtied and packing tape wrapped around his face. It was his death that spurred a wave of protests against ROTC that seemed almost cathartic, with decades of resentment against the practice surfacing.

Congress passed the National Service Training Program (NSTP) law, which retained ROTC as an option but also introduced two other choices. One is civic welfare training service, where students render community service through projects around the environment, public safety, health, sports and entrepreneurship. The other is literacy training service, where students help to teach basic reading and math.

Now we have two bills, introduced by Cebu Representatives Eduardo Gullas and Pastor Alcover Jr., with very similar texts, proposing to abolish the NSTP and bring back the earlier ROTC setup: two years of mandatory basic training and an optional two years of advanced training, with students shouldering expenses for the basic training and those who choose to go on to advanced ROTC getting free uniforms and, if they are in the top 5 percent of their class in academic performance, tuition discounts.

The proposed bills have nothing to show in terms of a rationale for bringing back the old ROTC. The two legislators repeat old claims that ROTC instills patriotism and discipline in our youth, and prepares them to defend the country if war breaks out.

Alcover even goes to the extent of claiming that it was ROTC graduates who fought the Japanese during the dark years of World War II. If he’ll read history books he’ll find that most of the anti-Japanese guerrillas, the frontliners, were impoverished peasants who did not even reach college and take ROTC. In fact, many of them were recruited and trained by the communist-led Hukbalahap, or Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon (People’s Anti-Japanese Army).

Masochistic sheep

The Americans themselves made ROTC optional years ago, even as they became embroiled in major wars: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. ROTC was controversial not so much because of corruption as because it was associated with militarism and war-mongering. Some universities even stopped offering ROTC completely, seeing it as an anachronism.

If the two bills proposing a restoration of compulsory ROTC make it to the debating floor, we’re going to have endless debates again, wasting taxpayers’ money. And if indeed our legislators are convinced by the carnal rhetoric that will be spewed out in defense of ROTC, more taxpayers’ money, as well as the precious time of students and parents, will be squandered for years to come.

Kabataan Party List Rep. Raymond Palatino has proposed an alternative to the ROTC bills, and this is to strengthen the NSTP to “foster patriotism, nationalism and selfless service” through more options for student involvement, including community-based health and nutrition, community immersion, disaster preparedness, ecological services, human rights education and advocacy.

It seems more logical to go for Palatino’s proposal, but sometimes we do seem to be a nation of masochists. And I worry we’ll allow the ROTC bills to again disrupt our national life.

The parallels between ROTC and the country’s political life are all too sharp: Like sheep we’re willing to be herded out for long, tiring days of marching left, right, left, right, back and forth, back and forth. In the ROTC drills and in Congress, a few alpha males (and an occasional female) do all the barking and talking and at the end of the day, we’re still running around in circles. We trudge home from ROTC and another day of impeachment hearings, exhausted and mad. It’s maddening, this MAD.

(Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph)