SAF 44 and need for sobriety

It is very easy for people, who did not have to make hard decisions and who are speaking from hindsight on scant information, to come up with conclusions on the Marwan operation that felled 44 members of the Special

Action Force of the Philippine National Police in Mamasapano, Maguindanao. These people are asking for the truth, but at the same time are demanding heads to roll with specific personalities in mind.

But even with the best laid plans, who can really tell the future?

Anger in a time of grief is understandable. But if we give in to anger we risk making wrong choices and adding to our losses. If this terrible tragedy that cost so many lives happened at a time we are supposedly on the verge of peace, how many more lives are we prepared to lose in an all-out war? True, there can be no peace without justice or honor without truth, but let us not mistake revenge for justice and angry opinion for truth.

It is thus reprehensible that instead of steering the public to sobriety, some members of the media even stoke public emotion into fury, substituting their opinions and speculations for news and discarding

objectivity, fairness and balance altogether.

In the past, were soldiers, killed in the line of duty whether by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or by the New People’s Army, given similar

“arrival honors” by an incumbent president? What was media opinion then? How ironic that the man working to end the carnage in Mindanao, is being pilloried simply for working on the day the police commandos’ bodies arrived in Manila.

In one of his novels, French writer Albert Camus wrote about a man whose drinking a cup of coffee on the day his mother died was used against him in court, which eventually led to his execution. Are we not in the same absurd pass right now?

We cannot correctly honor our heroes in anger, for by so doing, we fail to discern who truly grieve with us. If we are angered that the killers of the SAF 44 looted and desecrated the policemen’s bodies by stealing their weapons and clothing, we should also be outraged at the effort of the leftists to take advantage of the situation by sowing intrigue in the military and calling for President Aquino to resign. Their call is nothing but rank opportunism and cold-hearted cynicism.

The SAF 44 died for country, peace and freedom. They did not die for the cause of the marching militants.

—V. FIDEL GUIDOTE,

vfidelguidote

@gmail.com