No negotiating with terrorists
“Before the pandemic, US and allied maritime and air forces patrolled the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to stop pirates from pillaging passing ships.
Daily Tribune“Before the pandemic, US and allied maritime and air forces patrolled the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to stop pirates from pillaging passing ships.
An act of terrorism — the kidnapping of 17 Filipino seafarers by the Hamas-loving Houthis of Yemen — made President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. cancel at the last minute his trip to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he was supposed to attend the 28th Conference of Parties of the United Nations or COP28.
Little did the President know that a few days later, he'd be confronted with another terror attack, this time on our homefront, with the bombing of the gymnasium of the Mindanao State University as students and teachers prayed during Mass, leaving scores dead and wounded.
Swiftly blaming foreign terrorists for the dastardly deed, Mr. Marcos vowed to use all the powers vested in him by law to unleash state forces, the police and the military, to go after the cold-blooded murderers.
While nowhere near the scale of Hamas' 7 October massacre of over 1,200 Israelis and some foreigners, the Marawi bombing underscores the depravity of terrorists worldwide, whatever flag they may be carrying or the religious leaning from which they derive their zealotry.
Mr. Marcos must be thankful to have stayed at home if only so he could give the matter of the 17 kidnapped seafarers and the MSU attack his full attention. But aside from these two matters, the President may be inclined to kickstart things, if not kick asses, at the Department of Migrant Workers and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration.
This third matter is to ensure that his government affords full support for the eight Filipino seafarers languishing in jail since late July in Algeria over a drug trafficking case that makes no sense. As noted by global maritime players and industry experts, piracy has been overtaken by the cross-border narcotics trade as the sector's biggest problem.
Port authorities, they maintained, should be responsible for stopping drug syndicates from surreptitiously loading drugs onto the innumerable cargo each ship carries through the oceans. This holds for the eight seafarers, who were clueless that some 35 kilos of cocaine had been slipped onto their ship.
Nowadays, world leaders have to deal with border-hopping criminals, including those engaged in sex and labor trafficking, and terrorists who should be hounded no end until they are no longer able to sow mayhem and commit mass killings.
On Uncle Sam's shoulders squarely falls the burden of joining all the wars nations must wage against terrorists, like Israel's battle with Hamas, and now the Philippines against suspected local recruits of the Islamic State, the Dawlah Islamiyah.
Learning from the Houthis' commando-style attack on the 17 Filipino seafarers' ship, the Galaxy Leader, America and its allied forces foiled a similar attack by Yemen's version of Hamas, thereby allowing two Filipino seamen to escape harm.
This week, an American destroyer shot down multiple drones and rockets fired by the Houthis, while assisting commercial ships in the Red Sea, where the Galaxy Leader was commandeered, to safely sail away with their cargo.
Before the pandemic, US and allied maritime and air forces patrolled the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to stop pirates from pillaging passing ships.
This time around, allied forces must double their efforts as they also have to deal with terrorists like the Iran-backed Houthis. On Sunday, the Houthis fired a missile from Yemen that damaged the Bahamas-flagged MV Unity Explorer, but this thankfully did not result in casualties.
"We also have every reason to believe that these attacks, while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran. The United States will consider all appropriate responses in full coordination with its international allies and partners," the US said in a statement.
Enough already of the reactive actions by nations against terrorists. Bring the fight to them, as Israel has been doing in decimating Hamas like rats in their tunnels in Gaza.
The US should now consider striking the Houthis like it did the Taliban in Afghanistan in its war against terror to make Usama bin Laden pay for the 9-11 terror attack in the very heart of America.
Drones and missiles fired from Yemen and Lebanon have been directed towards Israel, and numerous attacks in Iraq and Syria have targeted US forces, injuring dozens of US personnel. Washington has blamed the attacks on Iran-backed forces and responded with air strikes on multiple occasions.
Okay, except maybe for the ones responsible for the MSU attack, all the other terrorist groups that have chosen to wage war against the civilized world have been identified.
So what now? There's no negotiating with terrorists as, like Hamas which said it would build the Palestinian nation on the ruins of Israel, their self-proclaimed objective is to supplant world order with chaos.