Welcome, Soldier!

June 1st was a bright summer day as the rains of the planting season hadn't started yet. Kith and kin of the Rivera Clan in San Antonio, Oton, at least a handful of family representatives, gathered to welcome one of their own, Sgt. First Class Rizalino S. Rivera. The day before, Toto Taboy, as he is fondly called, arrived from North Carolina of the U.S. of A. A welcome cook-out party was immediately arranged by his cousins Raul and Bebita. Hugs and kisses abound to the smell of barbecued pork chops and sizzling seafoods. And of course, the accompanying how-have-you-been chatter that never seemed to end.

Let me say that my cousin Taboy is not your ordinary soldier. He is a paratrooper, and in the 22 years that he has been in the U.S. Army, he has made more than a hundred jumps. He was first stationed at North Carolina's Fort Bragg where he underwent the rigors of parachute training. A Persian Gulf war veteran, he was in the thick of Desert Storm. He would jump with instruments of war plus other supplies—some 70-90 lbs.—strapped around his body. Now at 44, Taboy is quitting it all. Indeed a young age to retire. He is enjoying a well-deserved vacation, a respite in Cebu is in the itinerary, before going back to Fort Bragg to finally close the chapter of his life in the military. In U.S. war records, his name would be emblazoned among those to whom the American people owe respect and gratitude.

While in the States last April, Toto Taboy brought my husband Rudy and me to the War Memorial Museum of the 82nd Airborne Division to which he belongs. The history of the 82 nd Airborne Division from 1917 to the present is unfolded: World War I, WW II, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, and Haiti campaigns. Exhibits on combat operations are toned down by the Army's display of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. This visitor wished there would have been more of the latter, but then what can you expect from a war museum?

“Have you ever killed an enemy,” I asked Taboy who did not answer. Perhaps a tactless question, but the journalist in me prods to ask. In fact I wanted to ask more questions. He knew he has a peacenik cousin here who would forever protest against war and all forms of violence—believingly only in the power of words to effect change through a peaceful dialogue.

I am glad my cousin is retiring. He loves going places and is going to vacation with abandon. Boracay is also on schedule. He is going to savor every minute of freedom from having to take orders from superiors. He can serve in the army longer if he wants to, but I'm glad he has chosen to retire because he would be spared from fighting George Bush's most unconscionable war in Iraq.

It is now public knowledge that Iraq was not involved in the 911 bombing of the World Trade Center. Americans were duped into believing otherwise. No evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs, the celebrated abbreviation) was ever found. Without UN sanction, America went ahead with the invasion of Iraq that has resulted in thousands of dead and dismembered US soldiers and deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians. The arrogant slogan “Shock and Awe” and the presumptuous “Operation Iraqi Freedom” have gradually disappeared from the American press. Regime change was the reason for the precipitous invasion, but at the back of world opinion, the lure of Iraqi oil was the paramount motivation. Talk of vested interests underlying the intervention of foreign powers in another country's fate.

In the enviable comfort of a retiree, Taboy would have his own thoughts distinct from what his cousin here views as US imperialistic policies that disregard the doctrine of manifest destiny, that is, the people must decide their own fate, solve their own internal problems, chart the course of their own government however third-worldish and small their country is. Oppression can only go so far because a people can take only so much. A people's endurance under the yoke of dictatorship is not forever. Eventually, dictators get their day of reckoning as bear witness this long line of infamous characters: Pinochet of Argentina, Somoza of Nicaragua, Batista of Cuba, the Shah of Iran, Ceaucescu of Romania, Idi Amin of Nigeria, Duvalier of Haiti, and of course, Marcos ang Bayan kong Pilipinas.

Discussions replete with opposing views always characterize our family gatherings, but always a healthy respect for each other's stand on issues prevails. And so, once more with feeling, Welcome, Soldier! (Comments to juliaclagoc@yahoo.com)