Col. Ismael L. Villareal, commandant of the Citizens’ military Training Program at the Ateneo de Manila University, wants the University to expel some 30 students, most of them members of the Student Council. These students (whom Colonel Villareal is accusing of sedition) prevented 160 CMT cadets from attending the opening-day rites of the national Service Program (Malaya, July 12 and 13).

Although I do not go along with Colonel Villareals’s demand that these 30 students should be investigated over the incident, I believe just as strongly that Colonel Villareal should face a military board of inquiry and answer the following questions.

First, why was there a breakdown so lacking in intelligence that Colonel Villareal and the 160 cadets on whom he was "making hakot" were caught flat-footed by the student demonstration?

Second, is Colonel Villareal so lacking in the fundamental skills of positioning his men to the best advantage that he chose an assembly point so indefensible that his 160 men were effectively blockaded by a force which outnumbered 5-to-1?!

Third, why couldn’t Colonel Villareal and his cohorts negotiate their way out of the predicament? Where were the much-touted skills of the military in winning the people’s hearts and minds? How could the eloquence that we have traditionally associated with Ateneo students apparently vaporizes when they don CMT uniforms?

Fourth, what made the 30 blockading students so confident that they could challenge Colonel Villareal and his force which outnumbered them by a factor of 5?

Colonel Villareal’s valiant 160 is not the first military unit to face a breakdown in intelligence, a lack of tactical skills, a deficit of persuasive abilities, and an incapacity to make a credible show of strength. But most military units faced with such a combination of misfortune have tried to redeem themselves by relying on pristine military virtues of courage and heroism.

But not Colonel Villareal’s 160-man command. Instead of marching out and daring the outnumbered force of rag-tag blockaders to try and stop them, Colonel Villareal’s trainees just folded up. Where were the military virtues Colonel Villareal was supposed to have inculcated into his men?

Colonel Villareal owes his superiors an explanation.

JORDAN DY