BIG EFFORT: Imagine the time and energy spent by this nation monitoring the final conviction and execution yesterday of three Filipinos caught smuggling prohibited drugs to China.

Radio and TV networks reeled out a special coverage of the drama unfolding simultaneously in the hometown, the national capital and in China. Officials and politicians competed for stellar roles in the news. Prelates offered masses and led vigils. Social workers prepared the doomed trio’s relatives for the inevitable. Neighbors and next of kin gathered around to condole and ogle. Activist groups grabbed the chance to promote their advocacies. Et cetera.

If only we could muster even just half of that Big Effort in fighting the narcotics menace before – not after — it engulfs us, we would see less of illicit drugs and their corrosive effects on our community.

* * *

LESSONS LOST: The peak of the buildup of interest was the execution yesterday of the drug mules carrying the human names of Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, Ramon Credo and Elizabeth Batain.

From that high point on, alas, the interest all around will wane until other gripping issues capture our imagination.

And then what? Will we learn the lessons that the executions offer? Will we now catch the operators who harnessed the mules and the airport personnel who let them slip through (as they did the “Euro” generals smuggling out millions in police funds)?

Will the dramatic statements of high officials be translated into a no-nonsense offensive on the narco-syndicates, the clapping in jail of traffickers offering millions in bribe money, and the unmasking of their cohorts in enforcement agencies?

To be honest, I am pessimistic that the lessons of the high drama just played will be lost on us – again.

* * *

INTERFERENCE: I thought I have closed the page after saying in my POSTSCRIPT last March 24: “Whatever we think of Libya, it is a sovereign state whose problem is one of rebellion, a domestic conflict.

“When a segment of the population takes up arms against the government, it should expect to get hurt. When the state, with its right and obligation to defend itself, reacts and in the process maims or kills some of the rebels, that is to be expected.

“Rebellion is not a picnic. Rebels cease to be innocent civilians, they are combatants. When government forces shoot back, rebels should not complain to the outside world of being attacked. They have to be attacked. How else can the government defend itself?

“Now when outsiders, especially countries that have an axe to grind against Libya or its leader, use the rebels’ pleas as an excuse to come in not to separate the combatants as in a peacekeeping effort, but to side with one party and shoot at the other, I think that is not right.

“And when the United Nations, which sadly is in the grip of the Big Boys, allows itself to be used for this blatant interference in a domestic conflict, that is even worse.”

* * *

VAGUE NOTION: Then I came upon this March 28 memo of Prof. Hans Kochler, president of the International Progress Organization based in Austria, on UN Resolution 1973 authorizing a “no-fly zone” and “all necessary means” to protect civilians in Libya torn by a civil war.

Kochler said that the notion “all necessary measures” that member-states are invited to take “to protect civilians” and “to enforce compliance with the ban on flights” is vague and undefined.

He said, “Imprecise terms will be interpreted according to the self-interest of the intervening parties and, thus, can never be the basis of legally justified action… such terms have often been used as pretext for a virtually unrestrained use of force.”

* * *

ARBITRARY: To authorize “all necessary means,” he added, “is an invitation to an arbitrary and arrogant exercise of power, and makes the commitment of the United Nations to the international rule of law void of any meaning.”

He noted that the Secretaries of Defense and Foreign Affairs of Great Britain, one of the countries attacking Libya, had declined to exclude the targeted killing of the Libyan leader Moammar Kadhafi as one of the measures authorized under Resolution 1973.

But the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation has described the resolution – insofar as it allows everything — as “defective and flawed” and “resembles medieval calls for crusades.”

Noting that “a medieval hostis declaration has no room in modern international law,” Kochler said, “International vigilantism and a humanitarian free-for-all are elements of anarchy and belong in a pre-modern system of imperial powers.”

He said, “The ban on the use of force according to the UN Charter will become totally meaningless, if every member-state can effectively use force in pursuit of an abstract goal in a unilateral manner, and without any checks and balances.”

* * *

WORSE THREAT: Kochler said, “The stated goal of the ‘protection of civilians’ has been implemented by interested member-states, first and foremost the former colonial powers in North Africa in tandem with the US, in a way that has caused even more deaths among innocent civilians.”

The arbitrary way the UN resolution is being carried out, he warned, has led to “an increased threat to international security instead of containing it.”

He said, “What was essentially a domestic conflict, resulting from an armed uprising, has now become an international one.

“By intervening in a domestic conflict on the side of one party, the states that undertook to enforce the resolution… have further fuelled the conflict and brought about a situation that may lead to the disintegration of Libya, with the prospect of long-term instability in the entire North African and Mediterranean region.”