When Ang Tigbuhat reads the latest news on the Spratly Islands he cannot help remembering the novel “The Mouse that Roared” by Irish-American writer Leonard Wibberly. This book, written in 1955 would later become a hit comedy movie starring Peter Sellers. It was a 1970s spoof on the war in Vietnam and the Cold War in general.
The story is about a small inconsequential European kingdom falling into bankrupcy. To solve their economic woes, its leaders connive to fall under the colonial patronage of the most powerful country on the planet by going to war with it. Quite unfortunately, they win the war. It is up to you to fill in the details of that general plot. But you would have to have lived in those times to understand the true comic irony of it.
It is hard for people now to understand the true tragedy that was Vietnam. In our times we have seen Vietnam grow out of a long history of war to become the current upstart nation in Southeast Asia it has become. It’s hard for us to imagine that, once, hundreds of thousands of people died fighting over this land. This was a war that lasted for generations but it has reached a turning point soon after the Second World War with colonial France losing to nationalist Vietnamese forces fighting for independence. But as the victorious Vietnamese were mostly communists, the United States bought this war from the French through a convoluted mix of international diplomatic maneuverings and just plain old ’60s cloak and dagger. American politicians proposed the “domino theory,” which claimed that if Vietnam fell to the communists, other Asian nations would soon follow including the Philippines.
The Philippines figured into this war because it was mostly from here that the US fought the war launching warships from Subic and aircrafts from the Clark and Mactan Air Bases. Despite great advantage in men and equipment, the US eventually lost the war. In hindsight, many analysts claim this was a war that was won in the battlefield but lost in the political arena. This analysis may well be true.
This was the war that also launched the sex revolution and the very idea of youth activism. It launched the artistic careers of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and all the other icons of the counter-culture, the movement against the draft and the war itself. The war could have been won in Vietnam itself, perhaps. Or it could have gone on till today. But it could not possibly be won in the streets of America. Nor could it be won in the stage of international media. The US had nothing going for it here. It became a losing issue for American politicians. And so they pulled out.
There are lessons that have been learned from this war. Soldiers fight the war on city streets, paddies and boondocks but these are only half the battlefield. The other half is comprised of media focusing world attention into the day-to-day fighting, up close and personal. And the war is finally won by civilians voting for or against the war. Nowadays, one might vote through Twitter and Facebook, or by phone or text, and mostly by surveys. It is a post-modern world we live in. Every war from hereon is a post-modern war.
And the post-modern war should start from a clear premise that has been proven beyond doubt by the war in Vietnam. The actual fighting is only of symbolic value. The true war lies in how people actually perceive the fighting. People’s perceptions matter more than anything else.
Which brings us back to the “war” in the Spraty Islands and the movie, “The Mouse that Roared.” It is worthwhile to consider that the Americans will never go to war over the Spratly Islands. This does not mean they have a particular love for China. But they have too many wars already and they owe too much money to China.
The good test for this view is that it does not read too well as literature. It is not a good twist in the plot. It is neither video-genic nor compu-genic. But if Wibberly’s book teaches anything it shows how symbolically charming it is for a “David” country like ours to stand up to a “Goliath” like China. In this war, world sympathy will be in our favor. We have romance and fantasy on our side. We can win this war if it is fought as it will be in the grand arena of world attention. But we have to fight well and we have to fight as if we know no fear.
But lest we start thinking it is all right to spill blood over these islands, it is important for us first to understand, this is not a traditional war. It is a comic war. It is a war fought in absurdity inside the context of absurd post-modern times. It is showbiz. We are only fearless actors. We are the mouse that roared.