Cast away the shame

[maritoni 3]

By Jose Ma. Montelibano

Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 23:58:00 09/11/2008

MANILA, Philippines—S.1315, the Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act being proposed in Washington, is less about money and more about respect. The bill, which seeks to have Filipino veterans of World War II recognized and compensated, is grating to Filipino pride. It seeks to redress a wrong of more than six decades, which means that America had not, and does not, consider the Philippines, Filipinos and Filipino-Americans, or “Fil-Ams,” important enough to please.

In the whole scheme of things, the monetary part of the bill is not an objectionable amount that can unduly burden America. What is spent in Afghanistan and Iraq shows what the United States can afford or force itself to afford, from its perspective of national interest. Afghanistan and Iraq posed no direct threat to the US when the US decided to invade them and depose of their governments. Terrorists are everywhere, and if the US wishes to disable terrorism aimed at it, there will not be enough American soldiers to invade and occupy countries where anti-America terrorists are located.

The Japanese would have been considered terrorists too if terrorism had been defined during World War II. So would have been the Germans. Japanese and Germans bombed both military and civilian targets and caused much more damage than 9/11. To resist them when they attacked, to bother them with guerrilla warfare after American and regular Filipino soldiers had surrendered, and to drive them away with the liberation forces of Douglas MacArthur, Filipinos fought and died. Many of the veterans who survived were heroes but are now virtual beggars.

Why do they beg? Why do Fil-Ams beg for them? Why push what the majority of US lawmakers have resisted? Filing a bill that seeks to redress a wrong of decades was humiliating enough. It meant that America did not consider the sacrifice and courage of Filipino war veterans of equal value to those of their own — even if both had fought as brothers of the same cause and of the same territory considered by the US as its responsibility.

Many say there are more than three million Filipinos in the United States. One hundred dollars each from three million Filipinos, even on installment, could provide the war veterans more than what the S.1315 asks for. And what about 90 million Filipinos in the motherland, and the government that represents it? One hundred pesos each could honor and provide for the survivors and their families. Why beg?

We beg because we have become used to carrying our shame. We beg because our convenience or our comfort is more important than out honor. Worse, we may be begging because we are afraid to stand up and reclaim our self-respect.

I read an email from a community leader in San Diego that contained so much frustration at the apathy that Fil-Ams show over the veterans benefits issue. He asked if Fil-Ams could get angry enough over 62 years of injustice to surviving grandfathers and grandmothers, just like they were angered by a racial slur by one TV performer in one show? I can feel his intense disappointment with his own people. I even share it because it is a weakness not only of Filipinos who went to American but of Filipinos who stayed home as well.

What have we become that we can carry our shame so easily we may not recognize it as shame anymore? Shame might be turning out to be like the poverty afflicting tens of millions of Filipinos — so prevalent over so long a time that it has become part of the national landscape. We have lived with it shame too much that it has ceased to be a burden and is now being assimilated as part of our national character.

Poverty. Corruption. Shame. These are a people's cancers. They corrode our souls, blight our virtues, discolor our strengths.

We see our fellow Filipinos living in squalor and filth, scavenging, surviving like rats. Yet, we hardly feel for them anymore. When we severed our sympathy and empathy for them, when we began tolerating their suffering and pain, we dishonored ourselves.

When we accept corruption as a way of life, as a trait of governance, when we tolerate dishonesty and abuse from our leaders, we choose to be slaves in relative comfort rather than freemen standing up for their values.

When we bear with shame and fear lieu of seeking respect and honor, we abdicate conscience, abdicate adherence to right over wrong, abdicate the purity and dignity of creation and our human souls.

It is then foolish to push the veterans equity bill knowing the lawmakers we ask to pass the bill for the benefit of war veterans do not hold us in high regard, in any regard which approximates importance and value. If they had that in the first place, the rightfulness of the cause of the surviving Filipino war veterans would have long been the justification of a law recognizing and compensating the heroism of these veterans. Perhaps, instead of begging in the US Congress, we can simply go into self-reflection, chew on our propensity to live in shame, and decide whether we wish to go on like this or seek the courage to be honorable.

The way to honor might be a serious campaign for awareness among Fil-Ams, and then among Filipinos in the motherland and around the rest of the globe, awareness at the plight of the war veterans and the shame of having to beg the US Congress, awareness of the squalor we force the poor in the homeland to live in, aware of the embarrassingly low standards for ethics we choose to live by. We can start with one hundred dollars, in installments if necessary, for each Fil-Am for our war veterans, for one hundred pesos, also in installments if needed, for each Filipino for our war veterans. We can withdraw S.1315 and show US lawmakers, and the government of the Philippines, that Fil-Ams and Filipinos will begin a journey to value the sacrifice and heroism of Filipino war veterans and, hopefully, rediscover our national pride.

Then, we can turn our eyes from war veterans to impoverished Filipinos at home, accept the shameful way we treat them, and atone for our grievous wrong by embracing them as equal in worth and dignity, worthy of everything we can do from hereon in to release them from hell.