7.31.2004

The Phillipines and Negotiating with So-Called Terrorists

I say so-called above because as many people smarter than I have pointed out, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, and vice versa.

With that said, there has been much outrage turned to the Phillipines in light of making a deal - we're told - with insurgents holding a 47-year-old truck driver who had parts of his home country demonstrating in the streets each day for his safe return. They got their troops out from Iraq early (and remember, they had just a teeny force in place) and the truck driver eventually came home. Many other hostages both before and after this case have not been so lucky.

I'm not going to join the throng screaming at the Phillipines. I know logically you can't negotiate with terrorists, but I know heart-wise that if the point being negotiated upon was an acceptable loss (leaving just weeks early), I am not sure I could stand strong.

However, I think before countries decide to negotiate with terrorists, they need to take a good, hard, long, and long-term look at whether they should be throwing in their lot with Mr. Bush. This isn't a matter of a situation where we can all agree Mr. Bush is right, where all the supporting evidence matches for the rest of the world to see (we went to war on very speculative evidence which has since proven to be untrue), where we can attest to great, positive changes in Afghanistan or Iraq in the face of our mission.

Except for a relatively few exceptions, the "coalition of the willing" was the coalition of the "Bush has got our nuts in a vice." Historically, just because a country supports us does not mean our country will treat them very well (waving to Tony Blair in Britain, who now understands what some women do: that it's bad enough to put out and then not get a call the next day, but when your bully-date with the big package and the not-smooth technique demanded sodomy, too, it just made the insult that much worse).

[Ed. note: I have no idea where she... er.. I came up with that. Blame my cold. A fever makes you just pull things out of the air, y'know?]

Just like everything else this situation with Mr. Bush's execution of the "War on Terror" (now there's a brand name), one must look far more closely at the details than the spin. Look at the list of coalition members. They really put their neck on the figurative guillotine in this.