The world has become so small anything happening at the other side of the globe seems to be happening right in our own backyard.
We are referring to the Israelis who are reputed to have caused the installation of thousands of bombs in pagers and walkie-talkies and detonating these pagers simultaneously through remote control. Similarly, the walkie-talkies were detonated the next day, all at the same time also. Havoc was the result all over Lebanon, if not the whole Arab world. Especially so that several weeks earlier, the Israelis caused the assassination of a top leader of Hamas by the noses of the national leaders of Israel’s arch-enemy, Iran.
Such, like many other Israeli military exploits entail intelligence, daring, high level of patriotism and morale among intelligence and military officers.
Don’t we have those? No. Our military intelligence is a glaring contradiction in terms.
How about being daring which requires a high level of patriotism and morale? One can’t have these in an establishment riddled with big time corruption. How many of such were exposed among generals and top-ranking officers? From the collection of “pabaon” to being protectors of illegal gambling operations, these are so embarrassing it can make you commit suicide if you were a top-ranking officer. And, so Gen. Angelo Reyes did. At least he had the decency to admit how embarrassing the military establishment was. It still is.
Also, how can military and other officers in the armed services have a high morale? High government officials don’t even risk their necks. They are safely ensconced in the comforts of their offices, just waiting for their SOP (grease money) from government projects, and also the payola from illegal gambling joints.
All of these go all the way to the top.
Now, take the bullying of the whole country by the Chinese in the West Philippine Sea. As one law professor-lecturer in one continuing legal education seminar for lawyers said, the Vietnamese and Indonesians are not being bullied because whenever an attempt was made, they showed they were ready to fight by shooting at Chinese ships. He concluded by saying, “kelangan bang bumangon si Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio at iba nating national heroes, para tayo ay manlaban?’
Well, like all the other aspects cited herein, being daring has got to start from the very top.
So let us just content ourselves watching accounts of Israel military expoits on YouTube.**