When the world seemed to be falling apart, President Obama was a summiting all over the damn place.
From Washington, to Turkey, to Manila, then Kuala Lumpur.
It was just what Obama and the world needed. After the Paris Attacks, you need to take a “life goes on” attitude and not cower in fear.
And you need to stretch the globe.
Unfortunately, in America, Congress has made America small and puny, cowering in Washington, D.C. All while the president did the best thing he could do to defeat terrorism.
Go to work. Stay normal. Go to Manila.
Paris attacks, American victim
The Paris attacks were such a grim and horrific set of events. For American Filipinos, that the first American identified had a surname of Gonzalez was a troubling reminder of our colonial past.
How many Spanish surnames do people stop and think “Filipino?”
Not many, really.
Yet, when I heard Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, of California State University-Long Beach, named as the first American victim, I froze.
Filipina? I saw her picture. By sight, I thought Filipina.
Finally, I went to the school for confirmation. “No, she’s Hispanic,” the school’s head PR told me.
Does it matter? Not really. Only if you write for an ethnic publication. Then it makes a big difference. Sure, I’d care if she were Swedish, too. But it’s different on the ethnic beat.
Nohemi Gonzalez had another connection. She was like a lot of American-born children of immigrants in California.
She lived in El Monte, in the San Gabriel Valley suburbs of Los Angeles. She came from a city where the median income is under $40,000 a year. That’s still around two million pesos. Not bad in Antipolo.
But we’re talking America not the Philippines. More than 25 percent in her town is at or below the poverty level.
Gonzalez is worth remarking on because she was a kid who broke away from her surroundings, went to college, showed her brilliance and got a chance. She was studying abroad in France, majoring in design and had big, global dreams.
I could relate to her. I was 17 when I went from California France to live with a French family before starting college. I experienced the culture and fell in love with France.
I felt and knew Gonzalez’s dream and that sense of unlimited potential—like you were about to explode and could be anything.
To have that robbed of her, her family, and the world of that is just one of the injustices of the Paris attacks.
So how do we avenge that?
Obama’s global response
Obama was right to go straight to the G20 Summit and tell it like it is.
ISIS/ISIL isn’t a nation. And this isn’t a conventional war.
This line stuck in my head in how he described the enemy as killers, not a state: “If you have a handful of people who don’t mind dying, you can kill a lot of people.”
To have an unlimited supply of willing fodder led by the promise of virgins. That’s an enemy better than a truck load of Terminators.
But they’re a small force.
They require leverage to gain the upper hand. And the only way they can do that is by fear.
Obama also made a point not to connect the refugee issue with Paris.
And not to link this to some religious/cultural fight. “We don’t feed that notion that Christians and Muslims are at war,” Obama said. “If we want to defeat ISIL, that’s a good place to start.”
Obama warned that the whole thing leads to greater recruitment for ISIL if we define this as a “Muslim problem as opposed to a terrorist problem.”
And then Obama left Turkey for Manila.
It should have been an advantage. Manila is a day ahead of Washington. That gives the president a good head start.
But the GOP in the U.S., of course were moved to outrage, and they never let up.
Some called for tougher actions. Boots on the ground, seemingly forgetting what the missteps of an escalating war had done to the economy and the world under the Bush years.
But that’s what happens when your Congress responds with fear.
It also ends up doing crazy stuff like scapegoating the Syrian refugees, punishing the victims of ISIL and not ISIL itself.
While Obama was in Manila wearing a barong Tagalog and hobnobbing with the APEC set, Washington was suffering from the high fever of hysteria.
Being in a political season didn’t help. Fear is a good campaign device. But fear also exposes the lack of readiness of “outsiders” like Donald Trump.
The man who wants to build a wall along the border would block the entry of America to the refugees?
That’s not just un-Christian, that’s un-American.
Meanwhile Obama was doing what was best. He was working.
In the Philippines, it was important to show up and display the relationship between the Philippines, both militarily and economically.
The U.S. just announced a $250 million boost for maritime security assistance for its Southeast Asian partners.
“The United States, through its military presence and through its security assistance is demonstrating that we are going to uphold these basic principles,” said Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications at a Pan Pacific Hotel media briefing.
“We’ve made clear to China our opposition to the militarization of the South China Sea and continued, reclamation,” said Rhodes. “China has made commitments that they’re not going to pursue militarization of the South China Sea, and we’re going to have to monitor whether or not that’s the case.”
Assuring words for the Philippines. In the U.S., we didn’t hear much about that.
We did hear the president comment on the U.S. politicians connecting the wrong dots. ISIL and the Syrian refugees.
Obama made the point that there already is an 18-24 month vetting process. That security was already high. That the orphans, the widows and seniors, more than half of the Syrian refugees to come to the U.S. aren’t the ones to fear.
But it didn’t matter. Congress passed a tough restrictive bill against Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. And it was veto proof, 289-137.
For the Asian democracies, it was a democratic show of an anti-democratic urge. But thank goodness, the Philippines, America’s former colony, was there to prop up the leader of the free world. (Soon to be perhaps, except for Syrian refugees).
There were also some moments in Manila were protestors rallied against the TPP issue.
I was taken by its mention at the Kuala Lumpur town hall at Taylor’s University for the youth group YSEALI, the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative. The group helps young people come to the U.S. to study and work in the non-profit sector.
Two questions from Filipinos were worth noting. One a young woman who wanted to make farming sexy, so young people could have a future in the provinces, right where they are.
Obama said the answer might be technology. And he gave her an idea of sharing tractors and starting an UBER for farm equipment in the area. That was sexy.
Another young half-Filipino asked a question on the TPPA, the source of protests in Manila.
“We believe that the TPPA is an elitist deal,” he said. “The people has been excluded from it, even from the start…How does this bill you say that which includes everything, how does it tally with your principles of human rights, transparency and equality that the U.S. stands for?
The question received applause.
The president calmly batted it back. He said it just had to get done first, and now people can comment. “I still got to get it passed in Congress,” Obama said. ”There’s no guarantee.”
In the end he said he believes in market economies as the “best generators of wealth” in the world.
“But I think that market economies also have to have some government interventions to make sure that it’s fair and there’s fair competition, and that small businesses are not excluded by monopolies, and that workers have protection. So that’s the kind of balance that is reflected in TPP. And that’s reflective of, I think, my policies both in the United States and internationally.”
It was an important answer. I don’t know if I like TPP, yet. But I do know the balance has to be there.
What struck me is that the president’s approach could be just as valuable in fighting terrorism.
These were young people he was talking to. Young people with hope. Who had big dreams.
What if the audience were the young men and women who join ISIS?
If only to them the secular world was free and appealing, laden with opportunities. How attractive would ISIS be if the best thing you have to look forward to is a date with a strap on bomb?
If the world was more attractive to some than ISIS, we wouldn’t have to deal with our irrational fears of terrorism.
And we would have addressed the problem from where it begins.
This isn’t a religious war. It’s about a lack of opportunity.
Tell that to the next person who gets fired up about terrorism and talks about bombing and boots on the ground as our best options.
Maybe on a video game. But not real life.
There’s a peaceful solution that begins with honoring humanity, treating all people with mutual respect, and giving hope to those who feel they have no real economic opportunities.
That’s a better strategy to combat terror than fear, xenophobia and hate.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning American Filipino journalist and commentator. He lives in Northern California. Contact: www.twitter.com/emilamok, www.fb.com/emilguillermomedia
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