RP-US relations 3

The Medical Mission to Valladolid supposed to have been for yesterday has been postponed to next Sunday, Dec. 17. This has been billed as the biggest Medical Mission of the Sunshine Boys, chaired by businessman Ric Yanson.

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If Robert Strause, an ex-pat in Bacolod, raised my hackles, it was not because of the rape case by a U.S. Marine of a Filipina.

It was because of his charmed and abysmal ignorance of history. I hope to educate him. He should brush the dust off history books on why America wanted to colonize the Philippines and why Japan wanted to drive them out of here.

This will cure his false sense of superiority and will make him stop looking down on us where Americans had to die "defend" us from the Japanese and we would have starved had our people not gone to slave for the mighty dollar.

I hope he already did what I asked him, write to the Great White Father in the White House and U.S. Congress to stop sending aid to the Philippines, if at the end of the strings attached are insults.

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I don't want to repeat what I wrote Saturday that Japan invaded the Philippines to drive the Americans away whose presence with the British and the Dutch would deprive them of the raw materials of Asia and control the shipping lanes.

The tragedy was why did we die for the Americans when later we would be insulted for doing so. Never mind the economic aid. We were used to starving already. Most of those aid anyway goes to the private pockets of our thieving and sticky-fingered officials.

And if Strause would care for some historical facts, more Filipinos were killed by the carpet bombing of B-29s of the U.S. Air Force during the Manila Liberation than those killed by the Japanese all over Luzon.

True! The Japanese killed some but most of the victims were by the American bombs.

The family of the late President Elpidio Quirino was killed. Only Quirino and his daughter Victoria survived. The family of our former Bacolod Mayor Digoy Montalvo. The family and pater familia of the Claparols in Talisay. And many more. What have we to thank the Americans for?

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I agree with Strause that almost 100 percent of Filipinos given the clearance want to go to the U.S. where it is perceived to be flowing with milk and honey. No, you have to slave for every cent you earn there.

My readers must have noted I am one of the few journalists here who has been pro-American. I like the U.S. and the Americans until Robert Strause insulted the Filipinos.

Not me! I would rather be on my own here with little or even no money than be an errand boy and play second fiddle to the Americans.

Some years ago I took my family on a tour of the U.S. My dentist daughter wanted to work there. I said, no. Let's go home and work in Bacolod. Much later my other daughter took up her senior year in high school in Athens, Pennsylvania. After finishing her college here, she wanted to work in the U.S. I said, no. You work here. The Philippines is still the best. And that's the reason why you are here, Bob.

Bob, you quoted Britain's Tony Blair, "A country is judged by how many people want in and how many people want out." You are the best argument against your own thinking.

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But, I don't blame you, Bob Strause. We have the best people, honest and hardworking. You may look down on us, Bob. But we drove a President to exile and sent to jail another President.

You have not done that in your own great country. We are a patriotic people. We love our country.

In high school, some 60 years ago, we were made to memorize a poem, something like "A Man Without A Country" whose author I forgot but our high school books could have been written by American educators.

What I can recall is it runs like this, "Breathes there the man with soul so dead,/ Who never to himself hath said,/ This is my own my native land!/ Whose heart has never within him burned/ As home his footsteps he has turned / From wandering in a foreign land."

You are poor in history, Bob. I hope you are good in literature. National pride is important. I hope you read Cyrano de Bergerac who, when told by his friend Le Bret to stop acting like one of the Three Musketeers, answered, what would he do? Crawling on his belly, groveling in the dust? Scratching the back of any swine, tickling the horns of mammons just to have some gold? No!

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I have been harsh with you, Bob. And I can still be harsher. Just don't insult Filipinos. If you agree to that, I invite you for a cup of coffee where we can laugh at all these or insult each other more, whichever you feel is convenient for you.

I consider this case closed. Unless you want to lengthen it. I have many other topics to take up, especially with the latest developments in a stormy weather and politics.*

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