The decision by Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to withdraw troops from Iraq so that a Filipino would be saved from possible murder, takes the global war on terror to something of an untouched realm.

While the decision certainly satisfied mainstream Filipinos, the economic imperatives of the move are undeniable.

Going by the latest headcount, some eight million Filipinos work overseas and repatriate some US$8 billion to the nation's impoverished economy. Hence, it is only expedient to give the safety of workers greater importance, instead of choosing the fashionable option of lining up behind foreign alliances.

What is intriguingly fortunate for the Philippines is how close the crisis was to its eventual withdrawal of troops. Although it was not planning on withdrawing its troops before Aug 20, Manila would have figured that an early pullout and saving the life of a citizen would have rid it of this ordeal once and for all.

What does not need reiterating is the global war on terror is essentially an American-inspired one. As a spectator, the Philippines does not really have a major role in the conflict.

Unlike Seoul, which hosts a large American military community for protection, Manila has none of those preoccupations. Its moral obligations, as seen from the president's decision, are purely to its people.

Shortly before the crisis involving the Filipino, a South Korean translator was beheaded by terrorists when his country refused to withdraw its troops. Thus, it did not take long for Manila to break ranks with the US.

Underlying contest

Apart from the occasional sideshows in hostage taking, the Iraqi war is much about the value systems of the protagonists involved in the conflict.

Even US President George W Bush referred to the so-called "attack on our values" after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in his first televised address soon after the first planes had slammed into the World Trade Centre buildings.

If a parallel can be drawn, the current crisis in Iraq is much about the battle for the minds and indeed the value systems of the nations supporting and opposing it. Something of a dj vu, the current Iraqi situation would surely remind Americans of their own experience in 1776 when they achieved independence with French help.

In that war, victory was achieved not by the superiority of American forces in fact they hardly were, to say the very least but of the moral chord US insurrectionists struck with the outside world. That chord was the very same bond of freedom, equality and fraternity, which the French clearly saw in the American campaign as they did in their own.

And because support for the American campaign literally meant acceptance of French ideals, Paris was unstinting in its help for Washington. Moreover, these ideals rang with such moral force that they proved the instrumental tour de force in eventual victory over the British.

What these identical values meant was that they were seen as the psychological equivalent of ammunition needed to defeat an enemy.

Like in 1776, the Iraqi war should not be viewed any other way. It is a contest for the hearts and minds of people whose value systems interpret the moral dimension of the war.

On a geopolitical plane, it is about massaging the feelings of hurt in the Arab world, where pride is an important factor. The sight of former president Saddam Hussein in a pre-trial session has triggered deep-seated feelings of offence, and worsened by humiliation experienced daily by ordinary Iraqis when US servicemen rifle through their personal belongings.

To this day, what the US lacks and needs is an equally deep-seated understanding of the part played by such intangibles as pride, honour and the cultural importance of 'face'. Above all, if the intrusion of US servicemen into Iraqi homes is anything to go by, what it betrays is the fear of US harrassment.

That puts the US and its allies in Iraq clearly in a moral bind. If they are to be perceived as the 'liberators' of an emerging new society, what they need to realise first is that the values of freedom, equality and fraternity are a universal doctrine of human affairs, and not exclusively American or French.

And because the life of Angelo De La Cruz (the former Filipino hostage) was an equal denomination to the rest of his countrymen, the values reflected in the Philippines' decision is instructive - that success in war means putting up a common moral front.

To that end, the US has apparently failed.

JAYA PRAKASH is a journalism lecturer at FIS Education Centre in Singapore.