Ten years ago, the country asked one question. How do we stop drugs? Simple question. Very hard to answer.

Ten years later, we are asking a different one. What are we willing to own up to because we tried? That is the tragedy.

Operation Double Barrel turned 10 this week. Sold as the answer to the epidemic of drugs, remembered in bodies, defended as order, condemned as murder, and now stands before the world under the heaviest accusation the law can make: crimes against humanity.

Very big words.

Supposed to make everyone slow down before throwing them around. Because before we use words that big, we should ask a question just as big.

Crimes against humanity? Or crimes by humanity? Humanity did not vote. Filipinos did.

Duterte carried the name. The country supplied the appetite.

He did not sneak into Malacañang. Did not fool anyone.

He told Filipinos what kind of President he would be — again and again and again.

The country heard him. The country thought it understood him. It carried the Davao method all the way to the Palace.

If the charge is humanity, then include humanity. All of it. Not only the dead, the accused.

Also the frightened families who wanted the streets back. The people who believed, rightly or wrongly, that government had run out of gentle answers.

That is what makes this case so difficult. One side says humanity was violated. Another says humanity was being protected.

History is full of that.

People doing terrible things while believing, in their heart of hearts, they were preventing something even worse.

Then the law walks into the room and asks the terrible question: Should it follow the will of the people? Or stop the people from willing something they may one day regret?

Cases like this tempt us to believe they are about one man, rather than the country that produced him.

Every generation inherits a question it does not want to answer. Ours is simple.

What do we do when fear, crime, desperation become so heavy that ordinary government no longer feels enough?

History will decide many things about Rodrigo Duterte.

It will decide whether he was right, wrong, or if he went too far. Whether he saved lives, or he destroyed them.

There is one thing history must never allow us to do: forget that Duterte came from a “virgin.”

He came from us. From our fears. Failures. Hopes. Impatience.

But that does not excuse him. It does not condemn him.

Because in a democracy, unlike any other form of government, power is never born in a palace, but begins in the hands of ordinary people.

It is much easier to put one man on trial than to ask why millions thought he was the answer.

If the world remembers only him who held that power, but forgets the country that handed it to him, then we will have learned nothing. Not about him. Not about ourselves.

And if we learned nothing then, 10 years from now another man will stand where he stood.

No republic becomes wiser by remembering only its villains. It becomes wiser by remembering the road that led to them.Ten years ago, the country asked one question. How do we stop drugs? Simple question. Very hard to answer.

Ten years later, we are asking a different one. What are we willing to own up to because we tried? That is the tragedy.

Operation Double Barrel turned 10 this week. Sold as the answer to the epidemic of drugs, remembered in bodies, defended as order, condemned as murder, and now stands before the world under the heaviest accusation the law can make: crimes against humanity.

Very big words.

Supposed to make everyone slow down before throwing them around. Because before we use words that big, we should ask a question just as big.

Crimes against humanity? Or crimes by humanity? Humanity did not vote. Filipinos did.

Duterte carried the name. The country supplied the appetite.

He did not sneak into Malacañang. Did not fool anyone.

He told Filipinos what kind of President he would be — again and again and again.

The country heard him. The country thought it understood him. It carried the Davao method all the way to the Palace.

If the charge is humanity, then include humanity. All of it. Not only the dead, the accused.

Also the frightened families who wanted the streets back. The people who believed, rightly or wrongly, that government had run out of gentle answers.

That is what makes this case so difficult. One side says humanity was violated. Another says humanity was being protected.

History is full of that.

People doing terrible things while believing, in their heart of hearts, they were preventing something even worse.

Then the law walks into the room and asks the terrible question: Should it follow the will of the people? Or stop the people from willing something they may one day regret?

Cases like this tempt us to believe they are about one man, rather than the country that produced him.

Every generation inherits a question it does not want to answer. Ours is simple.

What do we do when fear, crime, desperation become so heavy that ordinary government no longer feels enough?

History will decide many things about Rodrigo Duterte.

It will decide whether he was right, wrong, or if he went too far. Whether he saved lives, or he destroyed them.

There is one thing history must never allow us to do: forget that Duterte came from a “virgin.”

He came from us. From our fears. Failures. Hopes. Impatience.

But that does not excuse him. It does not condemn him.

Because in a democracy, unlike any other form of government, power is never born in a palace, but begins in the hands of ordinary people.

It is much easier to put one man on trial than to ask why millions thought he was the answer.

If the world remembers only him who held that power, but forgets the country that handed it to him, then we will have learned nothing. Not about him. Not about ourselves.

And if we learned nothing then, 10 years from now another man will stand where he stood.

No republic becomes wiser by remembering only its villains. It becomes wiser by remembering the road that led to them.Ten years ago, the country asked one question. How do we stop drugs? Simple question. Very hard to answer.

Ten years later, we are asking a different one. What are we willing to own up to because we tried? That is the tragedy.

Operation Double Barrel turned 10 this week. Sold as the answer to the epidemic of drugs, remembered in bodies, defended as order, condemned as murder, and now stands before the world under the heaviest accusation the law can make: crimes against humanity.

Very big words.

Supposed to make everyone slow down before throwing them around. Because before we use words that big, we should ask a question just as big.