LIKE clockwork, leftist groups this week denounced the involvement of American troops in the ongoing battle against terrorist groups that overran Marawi City on May 23. The knee-jerk reaction from the Left is expected, but not particularly helpful.
Three weeks after the Maute group and its allies rampaged through the city, the death toll has breached 200, including 134 terrorists, 38 government troops and 30 civilians. Using tunnels, hiding in mosques, using civilians as shields and sniping at soldiers from fortified positions, the terrorists have thus far managed to fight off a government offensive that includes punishing airstrikes.
The problem isn’t the lack of force or firepower; it is the inability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to pinpoint enemy targets in an urban battleground that includes hostages and civilians trapped in the fighting.
This is where American unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, can make the difference.
Drones can provide 24-hour “eye-in-the-sky” capabilities, loitering over an area and sending back real-time images of activities on the ground.
They can be used for a variety of battlefield uses, providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. They can also be used to check for roadside bombs, listen to mobile phone conversations, provide close air support, or follow or attack insurgents.
Any one of these activities could reduce the number of casualties among our soldiers, improve the effectiveness of their attacks, and shorten the time it takes to clear Marawi City of its terrorist occupiers.
Which of these outcomes, we wonder, do the activists in leftist groups such as the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) specifically oppose?
If we are to go by their statements, none.
Instead, they oppose US involvement on an ideological basis as a form of meddling, and trot out the considerable sins of our American colonizers in Mindanao more than a century ago. The leftist group also points out that the involvement of American troops in the Marawi operation runs counter to President Rodrigo Duterte’s direction to shift away from dependence on Washington toward a more independent foreign policy.
Bayan also asks whether it was US intelligence on Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon and the Maute group that government forces used for a raid in Marawi City on May 23 that triggered the terrorist rampage there.
“Did the US urge the AFP to carry out the arrest of Hapilon at the exact time Duterte was in Russia, with the knowledge that things may get out of hand and affect Duterte’s Russia trip?” Bayan asks, exhibiting a suspicion that borders on the paranoid.
Mr. Duterte, who has minced no words in criticizing Washington, has been more pragmatic, thanking the US for its help, albeit half-heartedly.
Certainly, he too realizes that the American assistance can save soldiers’ lives, speed up the campaign to rid Marawi City of its terrorist occupiers, and get on with our lives. This isn’t the time to look a gift horse in the mouth; it’s time to finish the job that began when the Maute group terrorists overran one of our cities and tried, with extreme violence, to make it its own.
