The beheading

A reader, Ms. Gloria Parillas Earl, sent a letter to the editor (PDI 5/18/04) castigating me for what I said in my column piece (``Taguba’s report on Abu Ghraib’’, PDI 5/13/04) on the abuses--sexual, physical, psychological--committed by U.S. Army personnel against Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.

She asked: ``Where is Doyo’s disgust over the videotaped beheading of Nick Berg, whose passion for helping others got him into Iraq?’’

Another reader who read the letter promptly wrote to me via email and agreed with Ms. Earl on ``my lacking in courage’’ to condemn. He/she said I ``had written fair and balanced columns generally in the past but you seem, to `lose it’ when it pertains to issues about war and social injustice.’’ Too anti-U.S meddling, too pro-poor?

But a reader from San Francisco reacted to Ms. Earl’s letter by questioning Berg’s presence in Iraq. What he said was not very flattering to the dead.

So early and I was spilling my coffee.



I did not get to see the brief and digitized video clip of the beheading on CNN until later and tremble at its impact, that is, after I had masticated the U.S. senate investigation where Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, author of the report on the abuses, Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone and Lt. Gen. Lance Smith testified. That column was on Taguba’s report, which I had to download from the Internet, not on Berg’s beheading.

Yes, I meant to write about the beheading separately for today, and I planned to search for the clip on the Internet, if it was there at all, hoping I would have the stomach for it. I wanted more details on it. Maybe I’d notice something others didn’t see?

I was castigated too soon. Still, I respect and recognize readers’ impassioned reactions, their feeling strongly about something and making it known. They care.

Now the letter. Ms. Earl wrote: ``Ceres P. Doyo wanted me, an American, to raise hell with our leaders for the `disgusting’ ways a few coalition guards treated their prisoners at Abu Ghraib.’’

Ms. Earl, I never said that. What I said was: ``If I were an American I would be red-faced. If I were an American I would write my very own individual letter of apology to the world, to the people of Iraq and to the detainees in Abu Ghraib prison.’’ If I were…but then I am not.

``As an American,’’ Ms. Earl said, ``I do not apologize for our brave coalition men and women who run where wimps and cowards dare not go to defend the world’s freedom and liberty…’’ She also said, ``I am a Filipino too, but although I was ashamed of the Moros who beheaded the American hostages…I did not ask Doyo to apologize for her Moro countrymen’s barbarism. Neither did I blame the Philippine leaders nor did I ask them to apologize.’’

Did I say, you Americans must apologize? Pres. Bush didn’t have to. But I don’t want to sound facetious. A point I wanted to make in that article was that the men and women who committed the abuses were wearing the American flag, they were there in Iraq, carrying out America’s self-righteous role as, uh, ``constable of the world.’’ They were supposed to be on the moral high ground, to show those of us from backward societies how not to be barbarians and how they would bring about their vision of peace, their Pax Americana.

A preacher preaching love and then rapes a prostitute has more to answer for than a teenager who also commits rape.

When I saw those pictures of naked, abused detainees (many of them may have been terrorists), it was not condemnation that right away rose in my heart. It was the feeling of betrayal, of being let down. Like, how could you, so young, so fresh-faced, be like the terrorists? How could your leaders have missed out on teaching you something so important? You shamed your own people.

A rabid America hater might clap and say, ha, you’re just like your enemy, the terrorists. But this issue is not just about global terrorism. At the bottom line, this is also about having a sense of the worth of every human being, every creature.

These soldiers were being paid by the taxes of toiling American people. Could they not at least have been properly briefed by their seniors about human rights? That was what Taguba’s testimony on the breakdown of discipline was pointing at.

The beheading of Berg, and earlier, the beheading of journalist Pearl, said it loud and clear. The perpetrators were evil personified.

Ms. Earl, you sure would not want your American soldiers to be on the same level with terrorists and bandits. Those ``Moro countrymen’’ of mine you referred to, those who beheaded your fellow Americans, they do not want to be Filipinos. They do not carry my flag. I do not pay my taxes to them. My taxes in fact go to efforts to obliterate their evil, with little left for the most forgotten of this land.

And when, in the past, our own military committed abuses learned from the CIA, sure, I did stick out my own neck many times on many occasions and suffered for it. That was not heroism, that was journalism.

I did not overlook the pain of Ms. Earl’s compatriot, Abu Sayyaf hostage Gracia Burnham (``Gracia on the mystic road of love’’). But in deference to her pain, I chose not to write about how her missionary group was operating here. It had nothing to do with the hostage-taking. In the same way that what Berg was doing in Iraq, his being American or Jewish or caucasian, cannot not justify his beheading.

For those interested, American veteran journalist Alfred W. McCoy, who has written a lot about the Philippines, had an article in the Boston Globe last May 14 titled ``Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIA’s Manual.’’