Let's for a
minute ignore the fact that the recent Trump blathering about General John
Pershing using bullets dipped in pigs blood against Filipino rebels (he said terrorists) has no
factual basis. We're used to Trump
making shit up, and Cruz and Rubio are equally guilty on that score. What
concerns me is the demonstrably abysmal ignorance regarding the situation in
the Philippines which is shared by so many Americans, if they have any
awareness of said "insurrection" whatsoever.
Following the
bully boy demolition of a markedly inferior Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in May
1898, the United States decided that, even though there was a Filipino
national, General Aguinaldo, poised to take command of the Philippines and be
their first President, other plans were more desirable.
This was the
same general whose Filipino troops had taken control of Manila, driving the Spanish
from power after roughly 350 years of occupation and forced Catholicism. This
was the same man who had drafted a Declaration of Independence for the Philippines modeled on the US version.
After fighting against Spanish rule for several years, Aguinaldo allowed his
troops to support the American efforts in the Philippines, on his supposition
that this would lead to independence for the Philippines.
Imagine his
dismay when, after Aguinaldo's forces liberated Manila, US military moved in
and declared that Spain had merely been supplanted by the US, and the
Philippines were still not free and independent. Presidents McKinley and later
Roosevelt were avowed imperialists who saw in the Philippines not an oppressed
people longing for self government, but, as McKinley repeated from then
Governor General Taft in one of the most despicable public utterances ever to
emanate from the White House, " 'our little brown brothers' would need
'fifty or one hundred years' of close supervision 'to develop anything
resembling Anglo-Saxon political principles and skills.'" At the time, the
term (little brown brothers) was not
originally intended to be derogatory, nor an ethnic slur; instead, it is a
reflection of "paternalist racism", shared also by Theodore Roosevelt.
The
real reasons are far more prosaic - sugar, rubber and coaling stations for the
US Pacific fleet. Ergo, like it or not, the Filipinos lost their shot at
freedom. This desire for independence soon resulted in armed resistance against
the United States.
McKinley explained his motives in deciding to seize the
Philippines out of a sense of Christian mission: "One night late it came to me this way -
I don’t know how it was, but it came: (1) That we could not give them (i.e. the
Philippines) back to Spain - that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that
we could not turn them over to France and Germany - our commercial rivals in
the Orient - that would be bad business and discreditable; (3)
that we could not leave them to themselves - they were unfit for
self-government - and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse
than Spain’s was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take
them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them,
and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for
whom Christ also died" Apparently no one explained to McKinley that many
Filipinos were Catholic and their families had been for centuries. McKinley's
zealous missionary attitude was not only his, nor was his patronizing sense of the inferiority of the
Filipino people. For example, Indiana
Senator Albert Beveridge argued that "[God] has made us the master
organizers of the world. ... That we may administer ... among savages and
senile peoples."
The Philippine
Insurrection began with a skirmish on the night of February 4, 1899, just
outside of Manila.
No less a
personage than Mark Twain, a charter member of the Anti-imperialism league described
American troops as "our uniformed assassins" and describes their
killing of "six hundred helpless and weaponless savages" in the
Philippines as "a long and happy picnic with nothing to do but sit in
comfort and fire the Golden Rule into those people down there and imagine
letters to write home to the admiring families, and pile glory upon
glory." Modern methods such as water torture, and concentration camps were
used against Filipino patriots, with most efforts covered up by the American
commander General Otis, only coming to light when soldiers wrote home
describing the butchery in which they had become embroiled. One reporter wrote
"The present war is no bloodless, comic opera (sic) engagement; our men have been relentless,
have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active
insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that
the Filipino as such was little better than a dog."
The United
States Department of State estimated that the war "resulted in the death of
over 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants", and that "as
many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine, and
disease".
So tell me Mr. Trump - who were the real terrorists in the
Philippines?
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