VINDICTIVENESS of YELLOW

"We also received a request from President Aquino to bomb the rebel positions. I did not believe we should agree to do this— nor did [then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General [Colin] Powell… They could also explain the vindictiveness that is fast becoming the trademark of the current administration led by Cory Aquino’s son. "

Taken from: Jojo Robles

From the new autobiography of former United States Vice President Dick Cheney, “In My Time,” we read this interesting passage concerning the most violent coup attempt during the Cory Aquino administration, when Cheney was still defense secretary of President George Herbert Walker Bush:

“As we monitored events in Panama throughout the fall of 1989, we were also dealing with a potential coup in the Philippines. On November 30 we started getting reports that rebels opposed to the rule of Corazon Aquino had seized air bases belonging to the Filipino government. We also received a request from President Aquino to bomb the rebel positions. I did not believe we should agree to do this— nor did [then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General [Colin] Powell. For one thing, President Aquino made it clear she would publicly deny having made the request. Asking the United States to bomb Filipino citizens, even if they were rebels, would not go well inside her own country.”

If Cheney’s account is true, then Cory Aquino not only sought American help to bomb rebel forces led by then Col. Gregorio Honasan, with little regard for the lives that would be lost. She also wanted “deniability” if the US acceded to her request, doubtless so she could retain her image as a God-fearing Catholic instead of coming across as a desperate leader determined to hold on to power by any means, including American ordnance.

The Americans, of course, didn’t bomb Gringo and his men, using “persuasion flights” to keep the rebel-controlled air assets grounded instead. Cory later responded to the Americans’ refusal to bomb at her behest by snubbing Cheney when the latter visited Manila; she, according to the US, also allowed the bases in Clark and Subic to be “evicted” a couple of years later.

Cheney’s account of Cory Aquino’s vengefulness, by the way, was also related earlier by Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle, in his own autobiography. Quayle, Cheney and Powell had to decide on Cory’s demands for bombings because Bush was traveling to Malta when the Philippine President started calling.

The accounts could douse cold water on the efforts of the Yellow crowd to canonize Cory as a saint of the Catholic Church. They could also explain the vindictiveness that is fast becoming the trademark of the current administration led by Cory Aquino’s son.