SAGIP Pilipinas, the anti-war, anti-EDCA protest movement, is now on the road, and I wish it all the luck in the world. The purpose of a protest movement is not just to protest but above all to transform the idea or object being protested against. Sagip can benefit from the experience of successful protest movements. One such movement is the Vietnam peace movement in the United States.

From the 1960s through the 1970s, American anti-war activists protested their government’s immoral involvement in Vietnam and confronted the US centers of power with their patriotic rage. In 1966, they marched in front of the White House to demand an end of the war. On Oct. 21, 1967, some 100,000 protesters marched on the Pentagon with the same demand. About 50,000 marched across the Potomac River to the Pentagon and clashed with paratroopers.

The protest continued throughout the war, forcing President Nixon ultimately to negotiate with Hanoi. The US finally ended the war not so much because of Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap’s North Vietnamese forces but also because of the ubiquitous American peace activists everywhere.

This insight becomes particularly useful as Sagip launches its first motorized protest march in Luzon. The march is directed at the US’ announced plan to wage war with China over the ownership of Taiwan, and to involve the Philippines in that war. We must prevent it, if we can; Sagip must seek to achieve what the American peace movement achieved for Vietnam. It must be prepared to wage a long campaign not only among our countrymen, but even among Americans.

Under our Philippine-US Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), an armed attack on one party would endanger the security of the other and should prompt an appropriate response according to its own constitutional processes. China has not attacked the US, but in 2014 the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) granted the US military and civilian sites on Philippine soil to preposition armed forces, weaponry and war materiel for use against China, in violation of the Philippine Constitution, which expressly prohibits foreign military bases, troops or facilities to operate in the Philippines after the expiration of the Military Bases Agreement in 1991, except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate.

President Noynoy Aquino granted the US five such EDCA sites and Bongbong Marcos Jr. (BBM) four. This is what moved Sagip to launch its antiwar, anti-EDCA campaign. But instead of targeting the centers of power — such as Malacañang, the seat of the presidency; Camp Aguinaldo, the central headquarters of the Department of National Defense and Armed Forces of the Philippines; or the US embassy — it chose a much more modest road trip from Metro Manila to Tuguegarao, Cagayan where provincial governor Manuel Mamba, M.D. is leading the protest against the government’s decision to turn the Camilo Osias Naval Base in Sta. Ana town, and the La-lo civilian airport in La-lo town into EDCA sites, without the people’s prior consent.

The protest caravan got under way yesterday from the Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City en route to the Cagayan capital after mini-stops at Barasoain Church in Malolos, Bulacan and at the Gen. Antonio Luna Memorial in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. One of its main objectives is to link the heroes of the past to those of the present and awaken the patriotic consciousness of the young. In Tuguegarao, Mamba will host a major public rally that will hopefully attract multitudes from all over Cagayan and the nearby provinces.

This is the first leg of the caravan. From Tuguegarao, the caravan will move to the Visayas and Mindanao, where the anti-war and antiEDCA movement is reported to have already made a breakthrough; details to be announced later by Sagip organizers led by political activist and media man Herman “Mentong” Tiu Laurel.

As a citizen who has served in the Cabinet, the Senate, and in the media for 60 years now, I recognize Sagip’s launch as a patriotic call and welcome it as something totally congruent with the common good and our national weal. I believe with the Sagip organizers that we must do everything we can to prevent a Sino-American war from breaking out in our midst and getting us sucked into it as a naive and foolish participant.

In the emerging conflict that threatens to engulf the whole world, I support the position of Sen. Imee Marcos, the president’s elder sister and chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, which as a senator I used to chair. As the senator told a recent forum organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., we don’t have to choose between China and the US, who are both our friends. The only choice for us, if choose we must, is between our country and others, between our permanent self-interests and those of others— and we must always choose our own. We don’t want to see the US and China come to blows; we want to see them live together and compete and collaborate in peace. This position is not incompatible with our having the MDT and the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) that seeks to implement it. These treaties are solely designed for mutual defense and do not identify any enemy target. But EDCA not only violates the explicit constitutional prohibition on foreign military bases, troops or facilities on Philippine soil after 1991, but also designates China as a specific target of its military sites and facilities.

In that sense EDCA compels us to choose the US against China, and to violate the basic mandate of our own Constitution to pursue an “independent foreign policy” anchored on the paramount principles of “national sovereignty, territorial integrity, national interest, and the right to self-determination.” And to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.

By allowing the US to use Philippine military and civilian sites for its war effort, the government has effectively made America’s projected war its own, and reduced our national sovereignty, territorial integrity and national interest into cheap American possessions. Sagip has to call on the entire Filipino nation and the American patriots watching us to embrace its peace movement as their own.