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?

Government pre-disaster preparedness shows what government really is for

IN all of Philippine history, it is not just human actions that shape or alter it--natural disasters are also instrumental in changing the course of our history. Fact is, Philippine history is replete with instances where heroic actions caused by men were reactions from the effects of geophysical changes happening in their midst.

In our times, had Typhoon Ruby maintained its super typhoon strength and battered the National Capital Region (NCR) to smithereens, it could have been a political game changer. Remember that this administration's ratings began to go south when it blundered relief efforts in Typhoon Yolanda. The public began to lose confidence in the capabilities of this government to protect them during disasters.

These past few days show how effective and how valuable government is to its people. The effective implementation of pre-disaster preparedness protocols was near perfect. Local Government Units (LGUs) were effective in organising rescue and relocation of people. One described what happened as the second biggest relocation effort since World War two.

And this is not easy. It takes a gigantic effort, a Herculian task that involves skill in logistical and chain management. For this, I take my hat off for the government.