When Defense Secretary Lorenzana missed his brain

Defense Secretary Lorenzana is supposed to be a professional soldier. He's there at the Department of Defense to make sure that the military establishment does its mission according to the Constitution which is protect and preserve the patrimony of the nation.

Now, when the very defense secretary of this country shoots himself in the mouth by saying that the 2016 arbitral ruling is an "empty victory" because it is "unenforceable-able", you try to understand now why our armed forces lags behind its neighbors in South East Asia--- it is because we have men such as Lorenzana whose balls are up his head in lieu of his missing brain.

Lorenzana lacks the intellectual capabilities to understand that such a ruling is actually enforce-able, and how? By the securitizing the remaining isles and islands within the exclusive economic zone of our country and by assigning regular naval patrols do we make this ruling enforce-able.

Lorenzana probably fears for an encounter with Chinese coast guards but that is entirely far-fetched. China knows that the minute it moves against any Philippine vessel, it courts negative global perception and even attracts US attention. The US seventh fleet is just around the corner and any untoward incident between us and China would definitely elicit a response from our defense ally, the United States.

Do we have enough naval assets to counter China? Of course we don't. In the West Philippine sea dispute, both sides China and us, are not contemplating on using the full brunt of our armed forces just for some jutting rocks out of the ocean? It does not deter us from using our existing assets to patrol our territory. Don't tell me that patrolling our seas would court anger from China? And if it does, so what? We are just enforcing our sovereign rights as recognized by the entire world!

The only thing that Lorenzana probably knows is how to kill fellow Filipinos. He's totally still on a low intensity conflict mode that Lorenzana fears a confrontation with anything who speaks a foreign language and gung-ho on anything who speaks like a Filipino.

Or probably the reason is as simple as money--there's simply no revenue generated from ordering our navy to patrol our exclusive economic zone in that part of the Philippines. What it does is simply raise the sagging morale of our soldiers whose capabilities on warfare seemed always a subject of doubt by their civilian leaders, even Lorenzana who happened to be a retired soldier. This is exactly the problem if someone, a military bureaucrat such as Lorenzana is assigned as our country's defense chief--they think in terms of war expenditure.

Comparing regular patrols with a full scale insurgency war, Lorenzana would probably pick full scale war against fellow Filipinos simply on the basis that wars cost the government monies. When money is at stake, think how many people would be blessed instantaneously just supplying our armed forces with ammunition, gasoline, and the like?