Bully in Gaia’s yard

In our New Year’s scribble, we said, “save us from uncles, we pray.” A close colleague immediately observed that we meant Uncle Ben, but though we may indeed need to be saved from his inchoate policies, we will have to wait a few more years until the next gubernatorial election. He is still my guv!

It must be Uncle Sam! Even for its half-menacing I-want-You poster, its cultivated image is that of the defender of freedom and the ardent advocate of justice and human rights around the world. That was the case when I learned English through VOA, and was introduced to American culture through USIS.

Migrating to a United States in the middle of its civil rights movement and its Vietnam War, the reality was different. Uncle Sam half-heartedly heeded the wisdom of its judicial branch on racial issues. It wasted the blood of its youth against the ideology of a distant land, this at a time when resources to fight poverty was thin. This immigrant was conflicted like an orphan beholden to a secretly abusive but glamorous Uncle.

Going to school in Texas, we realized that the image of the generously funded cowboy wildcat oil driller supplanted the genteel industry of the southern plantation gentlemen in the American dream. Uncle Sam’s self-assumed guardianship of the world and its oil resources, with its WWII-Korea-Vietnam experience that war is profitable for business, fuels the flames of Gaia guardianship through domination. We are lucid that dear Uncle, self-consciously and intentionally, is a bully!

Why is this of any concern to us? One, we have been told often enough that we are a one-source government economy where productivity is a zero sum reality. In fact, we keep deluding ourselves into thinking that by letting investing messiahs build casinos in the Commonwealth, we would be self-reliant; we do not heed Tony Pellegrino’s advice to roll up our sleeves and start fructifying the verdant terrain and the ocean shallows.

Second, we are not as a tourist destination an independent entity. Attracting Chinese travelers during the Lunar New Year holidays where it vied in notices with Fiji did not make the grade even with the CNMI-only visa in place. Singapura and Aomen (Macau), with their casinos, failed to make the grade either. The gambling Chinese will not visit a site solely for that reason. Malaysia and the Maldives were preferred destinations (not counting cross-Strait traffic between Fujian-Taiwan), along with exotic locations in Southeast Asia. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese people do not travel to parade their wealth; they travel to meet interesting people who do not gouge their wallets.

Third, contrary to the recent quip that something insignificant is characterized as “like Guam, pleasant but without power,” the Marianas in fact has tremendous power to repel! We hold Uncle Sam’s military defense lines, and in a world that looks at Uncle Sam as a bully, we are not about to see peace-loving family oriented tourists on our shores.

And why are we seen as a bully? Libya gave up its nuclear program on the promise that its governance of oil resources and finances was going to be protected. That panned out to be false from the point of view of those outside the good graces of the Pentagon, which sees Uncle Sam’s fingerprints all over Tripoli, including Gaddafi’s assassination; the DPRK is grateful that Kim Jung Il insisted on spending its assets on nuclear armaments instead of relying on China and Russia’s promises to protect its interest from U.S., SoKor and Japan’s continuing efforts to destabilize its internal structures.

The end of U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has massed forces in Kuwait, Jordan, and Israel, with speculations that action versus Iran and Syria (and with its growing anti-U.S. sentiments, Saudi Arabia) are forthcoming. Massive embassy personnel usually associated with listening posts like Manila and Cairo now applies to the new Baghdad station, with some 1,900 former military personnel newly added to its employ.

Sanctioned and threatened Iran, whose shoreline is the length of the Persian and Oman Gulfs with the tight bend at the Strait of Hormuz on the UAE promontory, asked the U.S. 5th Fleet to keep its distance while it conducted naval exercises. The John C. Stennis carrier strike force quietly demurred but stayed close, and while in the Arabian Sea, it rescued 13 Iranian fisherman overwhelmed by 15 Somali pirates 170 miles southeast of Muscat, Oman. Iran expressed gratitude for the humanitarian act.

Accounts do not explain how and why Iranian fishermen and Somali pirates were so far out of their regular areas of operation, but for now, this was a great opportunity for the jolly green giant, Ho! Ho! Ho! to demonstrate that it was not a bully who willy-nilly bomb countries out of existence. No such luck. Instead, Defense and State gushed and gloated with glee, with no less than Penetta and the Carrier Admiral in the news. It was, however, silent over whether the maritime traffic it was protecting was at all disturbed!

The bully in Gaia’s land and sea is not friendly, and the way it devours revenues, t’aint my friend! I feel it has exceeded its mandate, but I will defend its right to learn from its mistake! He is, after all, my Uncle!