Posted on 02/11/2004 10:06:37 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Communist guerrillas threatened Wednesday to attack American troops participating in annual war exercises in the Philippines later this month if they stray into rebel zones.
About 2,500 U.S. Marines and 2,300 Filipino soldiers will take part in major combat and live-fire maneuvers from Feb. 23 to March 4.
The exercises, involving 46 American assault and transport aircraft, will bring U.S. troops near security hotspots, including Dinglayan Bay off Aurora, a mountainous province 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of Manila, where New People's Army guerrillas are active.
The Philippine exercise director, Brig. Gen. Rafael Romero, said there is a plan for a beach landing exercise in Dingalan Bay. The area has been adequately secured, he said.
The annual exercises, launched under a 1951 defense treaty to prepare the longtime military allies for joint combat, are aimed at dealing with external threats but would also involve antiterrorism scenarios, Romero said.
Military officials said the exercises are not part of any counter-insurgency operation and will not include a specific imaginary target.
However, communist rebel spokesman Gregorio Rosal said the exercise in Aurora, where the guerrillas maintain a major front, could be a cover for a clandestine surveillance or anti-insurgency operation.
He said the rebels will attack American or Filipino soldiers if they stray into their lairs or provoke them.
``We will try to avoid trouble but we will be prepared,'' Rosal said. ``Anybody who would make provocative acts would be a target of tactical offensives.''
A leftist group, the New Nationalist Alliance, said holding the exercises near an NPA stronghold was an act of government insincerity and a blow to peace talks that opened Tuesday between government and rebel negotiators in Norway.
The group accused Washington of projecting its power in Asia by deploying U.S. troops in the Philippines, which has become ``America's doormat in the region.''
The alliance said another venue of the exercises, western Palawan province, is crucial to U.S. interests because it is near the Spratlys, a South China Sea region contested by China, the Philippines and four other Asian nations.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a staunch U.S. ally, said the exercises had nothing to do with the dispute over the Spratly islands, and stressed that military alliance with Washington ``is not aimed at any nation or foe.''
China has protested past military exercises near the Spratlys.
Officials said the exercises on Palawan island, about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southwest of Manila, would focus on computer-based exercises and civic projects: building schools, digging water wells and providing medical services.
In recent years, U.S. forces have also carried out antiterrorist training on southern Mindanao island, where the Philippine military has been fighting Muslim separatists and the extremist group Abu Sayyaf.
If you announce to the tiger that you're going to kick him in the a$$, you may be dealing with the teeth sooner than you planned.
Tension might arise should the neighboring states of China, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam, which all claim Spratlys to be part of their territories, raise an issue over the conduct of military training exercises on the chain of islands in the South China Sea, which are believed to sit on vast mineral resources.In November 2003, the Philippine government posed to raise a diplomatic protest with China over the sighting of their research vessels and warships in the area. It was, however, not pursued after a negotiation with the Chinese officials.
The “Spratlys issue” is considered a potential flashpoint in the region. Vietnam and China have clashed twice over the Spratlys, in 1988 and 1992, and since the 1990s, the Philippines has been concerned over a Chinese installation on the Spratlys atoll of Mischief Reef.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, signed an accord with China last year calling on all the claimants to the Spratlys to avoid actions which may heighten tensions there.
The Spratlys consist of several hundred islands, reefs and sea mountains, with a total land area of less than five square kilometers and scattered across approximately 800,000 square kilometers of the South China Sea.
China and Taiwan claim the entire chain. China occupies or has placed markers on seven to 10 reefs in the Spratlys, while Taiwan occupies one of the largest islands, known as Taipung or "Itu Abu".
Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines claim only some parts, based on proximity to their shores. All the claimants, except Brunei, have stationed troops in the area. Japan, which controlled the islands for most of the first half of the century, formally renounced sovereignty claims in 1951. - SOURCE
Think this through a bit. This is an annual exercise, not something new and unexpected. The mutual threat to the US and the Philippines is not the communists, it is the muslims.
This is an election year, why would Bush do anything to instigate another conflict given the heat he's taking on Iraq? A military adventure in the Philippines would guarantee a dem in the WH come January.
If this were to go as you seem to hope it will where will the multiple Army divisions needed to fight in the Philippines come from? Which of the three MEFS gets pulled from current duties? Which carrier groups get pulled off station in support?
This is nothing more than the US maintaining a visible commitment to the region and some cage shaking by the commies.
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