By CPP Information Bureau
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today condemned the planned Balikatan 2012 exercises between the US military and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) scheduled to take place in April for “taking advantage of disasters and humanitarian crises to justify launching US military interventionist operations in the Philippines.”
According to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), joint US-RP military exercises scheduled for next month will focus on humanitarian assistance and disaster response and will be held in Metro Manila supposedly to come up with plans to address a high magnitude earthquake along the West Valley fault line. The fault line runs across Bulacan, Rodriguez, Rizal, Quezon City, Pasig, Taguig, Muntinlupa, San Pedro and Sta. Rosa in Laguna and Carmona, Cavite.
“Portraying the upcoming joint military exercises as part of humantiarian assistance and disaster response efforts is a crass publicity stunt to destigmatize US military interventionism in the Philippines,” said the CPP. “In doing so, the US and the Aquino regimes hope that US military interventionism will be more palatable to the Filipino people.”
“By holding the Balikatan exercises in the National Capital Region itself, the US and Aquino governments wish to gain maximum possible publicity points for the US military,” said the CPP. “The US and Aquino regimes are acutely aware of the growing opposition to US military intervention and plans to set up new military facilities to accomodate and service American rotational troops.”
“If the US really wanted to extend assistance in disaster response and humanitarian operations, it could instead send civilian agencies,” said the CPP. “The fact, however, is that in deploying its troops in the Philippines, humanitarian assistance is the least of all the concerns and objectives of the US government,” said the CPP.
“US military humanitarian operations are not at all what they are made to appear,” said the CPP. In the US Army Field Manual on Counterinsurgency released in 2006, American military officials assert that “There is no such thing as impartial humanitarian assistance or civil-military operations in (counterinsurgency).”
“The interventionist US imperialists hide behind the mask of so-called humanitarian missions in order to camouflage their more insidious operations including setting up military communications infrastructure, undertaking surveillance operations, deploying troops in counter-guerrilla military operations and advising the Philppine military in counterinsurgency,” said the CPP.