WHO DESTROYED PHILIPPINES?

Shultz and the 'Hit Men'

Destroyed the Philippines

by Mike Billington

Editor's Note: This is the third in a series of features on the assault against the Third World by the "Economic Hit Men." We examine here first the case of the Philippines, and then Mexico.

The U.S.-orchestrated coup which overthrew the government of Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 was a classic case study of what John Perkins describes in his recent book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, as the post-World War II preferred method of imposing colonial control under another name. In the Philippines case, George Shultz performed the roles of both the economic hit man, destroying and taking full control of the Philippine economy, and the coup-master, deposing the Philippine President in favor of an IMF puppet—while calling the operation "people power."

Throughout this process, from the late 1970s through the February 1986 coup, and beyond, Lyndon LaRouche and his collaborators were fully engaged in the fight to expose and reverse this subversion and destruction of one of America's most important allies, by the supranational financial institutions which Shultz and his ilk represent. By mobilizing support from patriots of both the United States and the Philippines, the LaRouche effort put a spotlight on the crimes of the Shultz cabal, as will be shown below. Although the effort failed to stop the process at that time, the crimes thus exposed in the Philippines can and must serve today as a nemesis to Shultz and his neo-conservative operatives, who are in an endgame in their effort to impose a new fascist order over the planet.

In a Nov. 16 interview on radio station DZAR in Manila, LaRouche described his own view of the special mission of the Philippines nation: "The Philippines has a very important pivotal role, some people would say geopolitically, in the entire region, of trying to bring together on a global scale for the first time, a world system, which is capable of accommodating both the European cultural heritage and Asian cultures. This is the great barrier, the great frontier, of a hopeful future for this planet: to bring together the cultures of Asia—which are different than those of Western Europe generally—with European culture, to get a global culture based on a system of sovereign nation-states, which understands that this unresolved cultural question has to be addressed, with a long-term view, of several generations, of creating an integrated set of sovereign nation-states as the system of the planet. So the Philippines is a very special country, with a unique importance for the people of Asia, in particular, in playing a key role in bringing about this kind of general integration of Asian and European civilizations."

The lesson of the subversion of the Philippines in the 1980s for today is clear. Shultz is the eminence gris behind the neo-conservatives running the Bush Administration, which has brought the world to the current disastrous circumstance. It is also the case that the Philippines, although currently lacking any national leadership comparable to that of Marcos, is nonetheless facing a new coup threat, orchestrated by the same neo-conservative circles in Washington who were responsible for the 1986 coup.

The popular memory of Ferdinand Marcos today, in the U.S. and in the Philippines, is largely shaped by the massive disinformation campaign created in the early 1980s by the circles around then-Secretary of State Shultz, and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz. 

Marcos was accused of corruption, human rights violations, plunder, and even the murder of a political opponent, Benigno Aquino—and this caricature is repeated ad nauseam still today. While Marcos was not without faults, he was by far the last Filipino head of state to have understood the challenge of true leadership in a world slipping towards chaos. His overthrow by the Shultz cabal had nothing to do with the charges issued publicly, but were intended to stop his national development policies, and his international collaboration with LaRouche and others in countering the genocidal policies of the IMF, and bringing into being a new world economic system based on development and justice.