So look here, it’s already almost 9 in the evening and I have just done a fourth of my homeworks! Sigh.

I read a column in the Inquirer today. It’s was “Can We Win a War?” by Isagani Cruz.

Hah. Who are we kidding. Our youth even overwhelmingly wants the Reserved Officers Training Course abolished. You must be kidding if you say this country is going to be able to win a war. In their defense, they argued, “America is going to help us in the war if ever,” and “The times today are peaceful and preparing for war isn’t necessary!”

War is everywhere in the real world.

There’s China. They are now, I think, the second largest economy in the world and they are bound to overtake America in no time. And they significantly have the largest army in the world. Are you kidding? Do you think America will help the Philippines to go against a threat to their superiority? No. They rather suck up to China than help a nation who can’t give anything in return. We don’t even want a single American military base in here as we’ve banished them from Subic and Clark bases.

Can we win a war?
by Isagani Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer

[...] What would happen, I wondered, if we should find ourselves at war with China over the Spratly Islands or, less ominously, a tiny state like Qatar over our overseas workers or Colombia over drug trafficking operations?

If the enemy were China, I doubt if the United States would risk impairing its thawing relations with it for our benefit, never mind our mutual defense treaty. China is certainly more important to the Americans than we are, for political and economic reasons. Neither would our supposed ally lift a finger in our conflict with the other belligerent state, which could also be among its steadfast supporters. It may be offering more profits to Wall Street than our country and its plummeting peso.

So, if we were left alone to fight our own battles, how would the Republic of the Philippines fare against the enemy?

[...] For one thing, we have a most indecisive commander in chief who can hardly provide an inspiring example of leadership to the Armed Forces. It’s not because she’s a woman; Indira Gandhi was a tower of strength when she was prime minister of India. President Macapagal was tickled pink when the London-based Financial Times called her the ‘‘Iron Lady of Asia,” but how would it know from far-off England?

[...] President Macapagal strikes many as a mere politician who would not hesitate to break bread with the likes of Mike Velarde, a former political adversary, with her eye on 2004. Our soldiers cannot be expected to follow her where her ultimate target is potential electoral rivals and not the foreign enemy. They may feel that she is using the military not so much to fight the war as to raise her stock in the coming presidential campaign, which is still three years from now. Her vacillations may endanger our defense strategy and put the lives of our soldier at peril.

For another, our Armed Forces are not equipped to fight an international war when they cannot even cope with the Abu Sayyaf. The generals had boasted as early as two years ago that they had trapped the bandit group, but it has not only eluded them but also even grown in number and strength to thumb its nose at the government. In addition, there are the NPA, the MILF and the resurrected MNLF, let alone the kidnapers and assassins, all snipping at their heels. The government keeps saying that everything is under control, but whose control?

[...] If they cannot capture our own homegrown subversives, how can we expect them to fight and win a war with a foreign foe?

I promised myself that I would do some, if not all my homeworks by tonight. As usual, I didn’t get to. I am again promising myself to do my math homework by tomorrow.

So here I am, typing my entry away at a quarter before 9. I’m still using Notepad since my journal entries aren’t back up yet and I don’t want to post anything new until my site is rebuilt.

I should’ve done my homework any time during the day because basically all I did was watch TV, eat, sleep and surf the net. But no homework. My mom also brought me to the school’s authorized tailor shop. My uniforms’ polo shirts are too small for me, see. Actually, it would have been alright but I’m actually getting fatter. So now, I am expecting a tailor-made polo shirt on Monday.

So. My journal is not back up yet at my website. The creator of Diary-x said my entries are still there and are recoverable. As of now, what matters the most to me is that they are still there and they’re not gone. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I find them lost. I mean, it’s like losing a life. For more than a year, you’ve been attached to writing insights and happenings on your life and then in an instance they’re all gone to be forgotten. Even if they are really utterly uninteresting.

So school’s going to start on Monday. I will seriously begin my homework later on. I actually didn’t copy the instruction for any of them so I called up some classmates to ask. “Victor, you’re only doing it now?!” I was told. Well… I’ll get it done tonight. I don’t want to do homework this weekend. At least not all of them. I plan to finish something tonight.