‘Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity, and the mother of truth.’

AT the ongoing Philippine Historical Association Annual Conference 2024 (with UP Los Baños Department of Social Sciences), among the topics presented were “Analyzing Florentino Hornedo’s Use Of Historical Hermeneutics In The Writing Of Philippine Cultural History” (Emmanuel Jeric A. Albela, Ph.D.), “Mga Talâ At Panukalang Historiográpikal Sa Aralíng Ninoy Aquino” (Alvin D. Campomanes), and “A History Of The UPManila Studies Program, 1989-2024” (Wensley M. Reyes, Ph.D.). My contribution is “Slice of Politico-Military History: The Journalist and the General Explain Filipinos in the Vietnam War” and my findings include:

1. Jose P. Magno Jr. (a young Filipino army officer when he was sent to Indo-China) and the Philippine Civic Action Group Vietnam, though unnamed, were in the firmament of the discussion of the politics of the Manila Summit of 1966 in Teodoro A. Agoncillo’s History of the Filipino People, 8th ed. QC: C&E Publishing, Inc., 1990, pp. 509-517.
2. Renato Constantino and Letizia R. Constantino’s The Philippines (Vol. 2): The Continuing Past (QC: The Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1978) allotted a sub-section on “The Question of Vietnam” in Chapter X: The Nationalist Crusade, pp. 154-155, but this was about the first time the Americans asked Manila to send troops to Vietnam in order to counterweigh the People’s Republic of China in the SEATO period.
3. No specifics in The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War: “US allies New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea also supplied artillery units.” [David Anderson. NY: Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 117]
4. But detailed in The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War — A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd ed.): “After much wrangling over funding, newly elected president Ferdinand Marcos endorsed the deployment of the Philippine Civil Action group (Philcag), a 2,300-man engineering group, financed mainly by the US Agency for International Development. Personally opposed to the employment of combat troops, Marcos won the Philippine Congress’s sanction to fund Philcag for 12 months, and by September 1966 the unit began debarking in South Vietnam. Secret economic concessions by President Johnson smoothed the procurement of Philcag. Yet by 1967 antipathy to Philcag in the Philippines led to a reduction in the size of the unit. Before its return home in 1969, nine Filipinos in Philcag had died in action.” [Spencer Tucker (editor). Volume II: H–P. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2011, pp. 907-908]
5. Vu Hong Lien and Peter Sharrock’s Descending Dragon, Rising Tiger — A History of Vietnam (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2014) simply states: “Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand were drawn into the war.” [p. 228]
6. Christopher Goscha’s Vietnam — A New History (NY: Basic Books, 2016) situates Manila’s military assistance within decolonization and avoids Cold War rhetoric: “Significantly, the countries that most supported the United States in Vietnam were all in the Asia–Pacific region. To varying degrees, their governments worried about the threat of communism and, with recent memories of Japanese expansion through Tonkin still in their minds, were keen on maintaining the Americans in the region. In 1969, the Australians had 8,000 combat troops in Vietnam, New Zealand had 552, the Philippines 2,000, Thailand had 11,568, and South Korea had 50,003, while Taiwan sent counter-insurgency specialists there. Some have written these countries off as ‘mercenaries.’ Although Washington exercised real pressure over them and provided all sorts of things to secure their support, each had its own reasons for joining the US, as did the Cubans, North Koreans, and East Germans who supported the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.” [pp. 386-387]

Thus, for the Filipino take on the matter, we really have to rely on Ben Cal’s “Warriors for Peace: The Saga of the Filipino Soldiers in the Vietnam War.” Continuing our series on the Nobel Peace Laureates whose visions, advocacies and frameworks the so-called peace-builders should be sustaining: “And I feel one thing I want to share with you all, the greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other?” — Mother Teresa [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1979/teresa/acceptance-speech/]

1. “I am particularly gratified that on this occasion the award goes to two citizens of nations that are both denuclearized and non-allied. The mass media calls attention to this fact all too seldom, as they are so one-sidedly concerned with the rivalry between the two superpower blocs. There are, after all, so many other countries in the world, and most have refused to serve as hostages to the superpowers.” — Alva Myrdal [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1982/myrdal/lecture/]
2. “Freedom of expression is the foundation of human rights, the source of humanity, and the mother of truth. To strangle freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, stifle humanity, and suppress truth. In order to exercise the right to freedom of speech conferred by the Constitution, one should fulfill the social responsibility of a Chinese citizen. There is nothing criminal in anything I have done. [But] if charges are brought against me because of this, I have no complaints.” — Liu Xiaobo, “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement,” Nobel Lecture in Absentia, December 10, 2010, Read by Liv Ullmann [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2010/xiaobo/lecture/]

Thus, in the National Peace Consciousness Month, we reiterate: “Whenever peace – conceived as the avoidance of war – has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community.” — Henry Kissinger[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1973/ceremony-speech/]