By Jan Vicente B. Pekas
Like everyone else for the past week, I have been trying to read or watch about the war between the United States and Israel against Iran. It is the main topic dominating our social media. Across social media platforms, I keep seeing rockets, planes dropping bombs, and innocent bystanders being caught up in the middle. All this while Trump puts out different justifications for going to war against Iran back home.
The most recent news I had read was about six American soldiers being killed in the conflict. Among them was a father and a college sophomore. I also found out that Turmp is approaching 80 years old.
So, a kid out there with his life ahead of him is unable to walk down that path because of someone who is already so close to death’s door. The soldier would have been close to my age. And the father would be leaving behind his own family.
In Iran, a mass burial was conducted for the over 100 schoolgirls and staff attacked by what is described by the Iranian government as a US-Israel attack.
Amidst all this madness, it does seem that overwhelming power has triumphed over law. Powerful old men get to play around with the lives of younger people. As if they were playing a game, they use anyone and anything to achieve their goals.
With all the international and humanitarian laws broken by the U.S., it is clear they are not constrained by them, or at least Trump is not. Sovereignty is not respected by the powerful. To achieve their goals, then anyone and anything is expendable. Whether that be a regime in South America or one in the Middle East, American power is capable of reaching past over oceans and meddling with foreign states, that is something we are all too familiar with at this point.
If we still don’t realize it by now, the U.S. is not to be trusted. This is not only because of their current meddling and missiles sent to foreign nations but their history of doing so. Time and time again, there have been American traces leftover after regime changes in many countries across different periods of time.
As our tiny island nation continues to walk a tight rope between China and the U.S., relying on any of them would only be putting ourselves in danger. The U.S. is not the reliable old brother that we often see them as. The U.S. is a violent nation with no qualms in sidelining the decision of the locals in their own homes.
We should stop idolizing our own colonizers and actually start building a proper nation with its own set of ideals and identity. In their view the Philippines is not much different from a Venezuela or an Iran, it is just one nation to be exploited for Western profits.
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