I got into a twitter argument with popular columnist Boo Chanco over President Aquino’s decision to welcome Japanese investors to the Philippines rather than welcome war casualties for burial. Boo was livid about it.

I like Boo. He did a story about one of my blogs long ago. He thinks earnestly.

Blogger Cocoy Dayao explained that this is a cultural thing, the expectation of hand-holding over grief such as loss of a loved one (“malasakit” he called it). Well, I accept that. My cultural founding is very different, having been shaped by a warmongering nation that often brought bodies back in bags, and the President rarely went to say “sorry about that” (Have U.S. Presidents in the Past Attended the Funerals of Dead Soldiers?).

My war experience was Viet Nam. There were 50,008 killed and the Presidents couldn’t greet very many of them. A lot of those…