The Return of GI Joe

The sonic booms coming from the twin engines of F-18 Hornets and British-made Harrier jets suddenly reverberated from the azure skies where once GI Joe lorded it over for nearly a century. For the nth time, our Big White Brothers are back with their war machines under the auspices of the annual Visiting Forces Agreement.

The US Forces are all over Angeles City and Tarlac, where American servicemen identified as US Navy Lt. Christian Sutter, a physician with the US Marine Wing Support Squadron (MWSS) 171, and Senior Chief Christopher Visperas assisted in the delivery of a bouncing baby boy. Gloria Tomas and husband Sonny, proud parents from Sula, San Jose, Tarlac, even named the boy after Sutter.

In Angeles City, Mayor Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno has welcomed the US Marine Corps led by Brig. Gen. Ronald Bailey, whose group had been accorded with the “City of Friendship Key.”

The presence of American forces, although temporary, rekindled old memories of the US-run Clark Air Base or the US 13th Air Force Jungle Air Base, once the largest military installation outside of the US mainland. Young recruits in the US Marine Corps can be seen strolling at SM Clark where once the defunct California Bus Lines was located. This time, however, the US forces leisurely walk outside the Clark Freeport Zone, unlike in the ’80s when four US servicemen had been gunned down in broad daylight, which prompted the US government to move all of its servicemen inside Clark. I still remember the joint US-Philippine military patrols that tested bilateral relations and flared up dissent.

Up close, the imposing war birds—Harriers, F-18 Hornets, C-17 Starlifter and C-130s—lined up at the PAF’s Haribon are being geared for the joint military exercises that will further improve the capability of the US and the Philippines to respond to external threats, particularly in the global war against terrorism. Are the United States and the Philippines winning the war against terrorism? The battlefronts of Iraq, Afghanistan and Mindanao had been churning out casualties and we see no end to international terrorism.

Amid a pall of gloom, the former Clark Air Base was turned over to the Philippine government on November 1991. Then US Ambassador to the Philippines Frank Wisner said: “The United States’ role in securing the Pacific has not ended with the withdrawal of US forces at Clark because it recognizes a dangerous world in a new world order.”

Amid the sound of “Taps” the US’ Stars and Stripes had been lowered for the last time as tears welled down the cheeks of bargirls and long-time Clark residents. Wisner said the job of national security “has not ended.”

GI Joe is back and he’d brought in new war machines.