n Monday, December the 4th, 2006, Judge Benjamin Pozon of the Makati Regional Trial Court sentenced US Marine Lance Corporal Daniel J. Smith to 40 years in prison for the rape of a 23-year old Filipina.

While the decision will most likely be appealed, this article would like to tackle the larger issue of the government's and for that matter, the Philippine Society's responsibility for the sullied reputation of Filipinas worldwide. While Philippine Women's organizations are dancing in the streets in celebration of this verdict, the fact remains that the perception many foreigners have of Filipinas, is still quite unflattering--to put it mildly.

For several generations of US airmen and sailors, Filipinas were the women you found inside the honky-tonk bars and brothels outside Clark Airbase and Subic Naval Base. For Japanese and European business travelers, they are the "cheap lay" that you pad on to your expense report under the heading "entertainment expenses." For the love-lorn Caucasian, they are the brides you order through the mail.

If Filipinos want to get serious about rehabilitating the image of the Filipina in the eyes of the world, then it should be done, not by meting-out 40-year jail sentences to young soldiers like Daniel Smith, but by getting to the root of the problem and closing down places like the Neptune bar where predatory women seek out unsuspecting foreigners; by shutting down all those massage parlors and Karaoke TV bars that are really just brothels in disguise; by taking offline all those mail-order-bride websites full of photos of Filipinas who are willing to marry any man sight-unseen.

Filipinas will still have to live-down the sordid reputation of their sisters' past for some time to come. An example of this "past" surfaced in the US media a few days before the US midterm elections this past November. Sen. George Allan attempted to discredit his opponent, Jim Webb with the women voters of Virginia, by pointing to a passage from Webb's book that detailed Webb's experiences while in the military. In that passage, Webb describes how a bar dancer cuts a banana into several pieces using nothing but her genitals! And where, you ask, was this bar where women did these amazing yet appalling acts? If you answered Olongapo, you're correct!

It is high time we reconstruct the Filipina image, and if we have to be tough on the men, we have to be just as tough on the women.