Unhappy warrior
A disgruntled military officer used the occasion of the Philippine Air Force’s 65th anniversary last week to launch a broadside at a new enemy: the civilianization of the Philippine military. A PAF magazine article titled “Militum Phasellus: Developing an outlook of professionalism in the AFP” took square aim at the Armed Forces’ “diversion of missions and capabilities” for civilian purposes, and then fired salvo after salvo.
Given that the unnamed writer belongs in all likelihood to the Air Force, one is tempted to explain away this grousing in print as the reflections of an officer who has not seen much military action in recent years; the PAF, after all, is no longer what it was a generation ago and does not, in fact, have a single jet fighter to tame the sky. The military operations to counter the long-running communist insurgency, the Moro separatist rebellion and Abu Sayyaf banditry have been borne largely by the Army and the Marines; PAF involvement has been constrained by its lack of resources.
But that line of argument is, at its core, ad hominem. The startling proposals at the heart of the article are disturbing precisely because of their content. We can summarize the proposals in these terms: They posit a view of military professionalism that is narrow and extreme; they fail to understand the nature of the military in a democracy; not least, they misunderstand the lessons of the same military history they seek to promote.
To develop “an outlook of professionalism,” the article calls on the Armed Forces to begin “by returning to its traditional or war-fighting roots.” But while a military worthy of its name and of the people’s trust must be well-trained and adequately armed, it is a mistake to confuse the definition of military professionalism with war-fighting alone. Indeed, the national armies with the highest reputation for military prowess today, such as the American or the French, recognize that often the most effective way to win a military conflict is (no surprise there) to “win the hearts and the minds” of the population at risk. It is possible, then, to argue for more training or better arms or new fighting units; it is a grievous error to think that war-fighting capabilities alone will allow the military to achieve its aims.
To prove that the culture of civilianization is rampant in any branch of the Philippine military, the article cuttingly reminds its readers of a common reality: “One needs only to read AFP anniversary programs or [annual] reports to see this trend.” This has led to “a situation wherein people in the military no longer considered themselves as warriors. Instead, they perceived themselves as policemen, relief workers, educators, builders, health care providers, politicians—everything but war-fighters.” The best rejoinder to this reading is to say: That’s progress! (Except for the part about the politician.) When the Constitution defined the Armed Forces’ mandate as the protector of the people, surely it did not seek to limit the military’s scope of protection to combat alone. (One more thing: On any given day, there are hundreds of soldiers in combat zones. It is a disservice to them to say they are nonwarriors.)
To place its thesis in a long-term perspective, the article pointed to the lack of interest in the country’s military history as “another sign that military professionalism is eroding.” If this lack of interest is true, then the situation is truly unfortunate. But the article writer is himself a victim of this lack of historical appreciation; we get the sense that by military history he only means the episodic narrative of classic battles. While there is great practical virtue to be learned from studying—just to give one example—how AFP units under Roy Cimatu et al. captured the various camps of Salamat Hashim’s Moro Islamic Liberation Front in a matter of months, the real lesson from that conflict is that superior military prowess could not by itself bring an end to the Moro rebellion. And that’s where the civilianization the writer so disdains comes into the picture.
Could these startling thoughts have been aired as a way to express displeasure with the present direction of the defense department, which is headed by a former general whose claim to fame was service as, essentially, Palace police? Could the writer and the editors who allowed the article to see print have been emboldened by the renewed emphasis on the US military alliance and on the modernization of the AFP? More reason, then, to heed the true lessons of history.
