More than 6,200 participants came to honor more than 76,000 Prisoners of War at the 25th Annual Bataan Memorial Death March at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, on March 23, 2014 | Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Part XXXIX of the “Geopolitics” Series
“Bataan Day (of Valor)” lessons in 1942 should have been copied and done in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and now in the Israeli-Hamas War.
“Back to Bataan” was a 1945 American black-and-white World War II war film drama from RKO Radio Pictures. The plot was about an American army colonel named Joseph Madden (played by John Wayne) stationed in the Philippines. When World War II began, much of the U.S. military retreated from the City of Manila, its suburbs, and other American bases to the Bataan Peninsula.
The Philippine capital of Manila and other nearby cities were declared “open cities” — according to a strategic plan called “Orange-3” devised by Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his staff. Japanese troops occupied Manila without firing a shot. It was a grim situation in the Philippines after the surrender on April 9, 1942, of American-Filipino forces in Bataan. The movie showed the tenacious Madden-led attempts to rally Filipino guerrilla fighters to continue assaults on the Japanese. Among Madden’s band of soldiers was Captain Andres Bonifacio (played by Anthony Quinn), who struggled with the burden of being the grandson of a war hero in the Filipino Revolution (against Spain).
The Battle of Bataan was fought by the United States and the Philippine Commonwealth against Japan during World War II. The series of battles represented the most intense phase of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, which started on December 8, 1941.
According to historical accounts, “Oplan Orange-3” was the final plan for the Philippines’ defense. In the Oplan, major portions of the Islands would be lost to the Japanese. But the American- and Filipino forces would hold Manila Bay, with the American-Filipino soldiers retreating to a defensive position in the Bataan Peninsula (close to the mouth of Manila Bay). The plan was to pin down the Japanese invaders in Bataan until the U.S. Navy could acquire the needed manpower, equipment, and supplies to retake the Philippines. However, the American naval version of the cavalry did not come in the next 30 months.
The Philippine government declared April 9 as the “Araw ng Kagitingan” (Day of Valor) to commemorate the surrender of the combined U.S.-Philippine armed forces in Bataan Province.
On February 23, 2022, this column said, “President Biden Must Urge Ukraine to Declare an ‘Open City’ Policy,”
This column respectfully suggested to President Biden that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine declare the major urban centers of his beleaguered nation as “open cities.” There is an American precedent for this.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instructed Gen. Douglas MacArthur to evacuate the combined American and Filipino forces from Manila and other urban centers. The American decision was to prevent the loss of civilian lives and injuries to many more non-military individuals. It happened just after the Japanese Imperial Army landed on the main Philippine island of Luzon. The Allied Forces returned to a defensive perimeter in the Bataan Peninsula, per the so-called ” Orange ” military plan conceived before World War II.
“The Afghan government and its military forces could have considered withdrawing to a position that was more defensible, akin to a situation comparable to the Bataan Peninsula during the onset of World War II.”
It is public knowledge that the Kremlin invasion of Ukraine is an ongoing war. It began in February 2014. Following Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity,” Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas conflict (or “civil war” in the Eastern Front).
American geopoliticians and military leaders should have devised a similar “Oplan Orange-3” for the capital city of Kabul, Afghanistan, in February 2020 (or even earlier) before Taliban forces reoccupied it in August 2021. The Afghan government and its military forces could have considered withdrawing to a more defensible position, akin to a situation comparable to the Bataan Peninsula during the onset of World War II.” The Afghan government and its military units should have retreated to a more defensible position, like in an Afghan equivalent of the Bataan Peninsula at the start of World War II.
There was enough time to emulate the leadership of President Roosevelt and General MacArthur several years before the start of WWII. There ought to be plans for an “Open City” declaration for Kabul and other big Afghan cities — during the Trump Administration. Allegations say that not even an “Exit Strategy” was devised by then-President Trump and handed over to his successor, Joe Biden. First, Mr. Trump did not concede to the 2020 election. He did not even attend the inauguration of Mr. Biden as the 46th president.
The “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” commonly known as the United States–Taliban deal or the Doha Accord, was a peace agreement engineered by the Trump Administration. It was signed by the United States and the Taliban on February 29, 2020, in Doha, Qatar, to bring an end to the 2001–2021 war in Afghanistan. But then-President Trump did not instruct the U.S. military to help the existing anti-Taliban government of Afghanistan in preparing a similar “Oplan Orange-3.”
The civilian and military leaders of Hamas and Israel both showed a simpleminded approach to a military conflict. In their present war, nearly all of their leaders opted not to declare cities demilitarized (as Open Cities or even Towns or Kibbutz) in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied areas of Palestine. It resulted in indiscriminate deaths and injuries by the tens of thousands in Gaza and certain affected rural and urban areas of Israel. Even humanitarian workers, ambulance drivers, cooks, medics, and journalists have been killed or wounded.
Perhaps if only Israeli and Palestinian decision-makers were as astute, disciplined, and principled as President Roosevelt, General MacArthur, and their staff were, results could have been different in the present war in the Middle East. It is why history has treated President Roosevelt, General MacArthur, and their peers kindly.
Will present Israeli and Hamas leaders end up in the dustbin of history? And being cursed by the coming generations of Israelis and Palestinians? Perhaps readers’s educated guesses are as good as this columnist’s.
