[lit-ideas] The Philippines and Iraq

  • From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 09:25:59 -0700

In discussions of whether or not the U.S. is or ever has been an empire, the
matter of the Philippines always comes up.  We did after all possess the
Philippines much as any empire might.   Interestingly there was considerable
resistance against our acquiring the Philippines and when the body count
started going up, many Americans wanted us to get out, but our getting in
had its justification.  [I've made some comments below the Bevin Alexander's
material comparing the Philippine and Iraqi invasions.]

 

Bevin Alexander in his How America Got it Right, The U.S. March to Military
and Political Supremacy, 2005, on page 67 wrote, "While some had been
vocally advocating a strong U.S. presence on the world stage, it would be a
civil war in Cuba that thrust the United States into imperialism.  In 1895
Cuban insurgents rebelled against the Spanish colonial government,
destroying cane fields, sugar mills, and other property in the hope of
rendering the island worthless to Spain.  In February 1896 a new Spanish
captain-general, Valeriano Weyler, ordered the entire population of large
districts in central and western Cuban into concentration camps surrounded
by trenches, barbed wire, and blockhouses.  There he provided neither
adequate food nor sanitation.  Cubans who disobeyed the 'reoncentration'
were shot on sight.  Famine and disease spread in the camps.  By spring 1898
200,000 reconscentrados had died out of a total population of 1.6 million.  

 

"The plight of the Cuban people aroused tremendous sentiment in the United
States. . . A rising demand came from Americans to intervene, but they
wanted no U.S. colony, only a free Cuba.

 

"Any chance for a compromise was ruined by the explosion of the U.S.
battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, in which 260
American seaman lost their lives. . ."

 

"On March 28, 1898, President William McKinley demanded independence for
Cuba.  The Spanish government desperately sought allies in Europe.  But
Britain refused, and all the other capitals said they'd act only if someone
else took the lead.  Spain tried to compromise but rejected Cuban freedom.
When the U.S. Congress passed a resolution recognizing the independence of
the island, Spain declared war.  

 

"The conflict was pathetically one-sided.  The Spanish navy had nothing to
match the four new U.S. battleships that had been authorized under President
Harrison, and Spanish crews were wretchedly inefficient.  Theodore
Roosevelt, the assistance secretary of the navy, had already targeted the
Spanish-owned Philippine Islands for occupation and had alerted Commodore
George Dewey, chief of the Asiatic squadron, to move immediately after war
was declared.  Dewey sank or burned the entire Spanish flotilla at Manila,
and at the end of July, 11,000 American troops entered Manila against only
token resistance.  On the way, Americans occupied Guam in the Marianas,
another Spanish colony."

 

Soon "the Spanish asked for peace."

 

"There was no dispute about acquiring Guam and little about annexing Puerto
Rico, a relatively small island inhabited mainly by people of European
culture, though they spoke an alien tongue.  Puerto Rico's strategic
location at the outer edge of the Caribbean could shield any ship canal in
Central America, and this reason alone was sufficient to ensure annexation.


 

"Nor did the U.S. government waste much time discussing annexation of
another group of islands, Hawaii.  Dewey's victory at Manila had turned
American eyes on the Pacific, and it would be essential to keep a naval base
at Hawaii.  With little argument a joint resolution passed both houses of
Congress, and on August 12, 1898, Hawaii passed formally under the flag of
the United States.

 

"But the Philippines were another matter.  The archipelago was 6,000 miles
from San Francisco, and its 7 million people were Malays, with a vastly
different culture.  Many of the people were pagans and Muslims.  Moreover,
the Filipinos had also been trying to win independence from Spain and didn't
want to become subjects of the United States.  Here was a dangerous venture
into imperialism, a violation of time-honored American principles.  While
the Social Darwinists endorsed annexing the islands, opponents formed an
Anti-Imperialist League, and in the Senate many Democrats and a few
Republicans made clear that they would vote against annexation.

 

"Then a couple of disturbing events took place.  Japan proposed that it join
with the United States and a third power to administer the Philippines.  In
light of Japan's recent aggressions against China, no one in the U.S.
government wanted Japan to have any hand in the islands, for its intentions
were obviously to gain a permanent position there. . . "

 

"The debate in the Senate was long and hard.  But on February 6, 1899, the
Senate voted 57-27 to acquire the Philippines, just one vote above the
two-thirds necessary for approval.  Two days before the Filipinos had opened
hostilities in Manila against the Americans.  It was not until July 1902
that resistance finally subsided.  

 

"The Philippine insurrection soured most Americans on the idea of empire.
The Social Darwinists' dream of joining with Britain and establishing
'Anglo-Saxon' domination of the world evaporated in the reality of a nasty
guerrilla war in a faraway tropical archipelago.  The insurrection took
4,200 American lives, and 2,800 more were wounded; in contrast, the Spanish
American War itself had claimed just 379 American lives.  Americans also
killed 16,000 Filipinos in battle, and as many as 200,000 civilians died,
victims of disease, famine and cruelties on both sides.  Possessing the
islands became an embarrassment to the United States.  We toyed with plans
to free the Filipinos on several occasions, and in 1934 Congress finally
passed a bill that promised independence.  On July 4, 1946, less than a year
after the end of World War II, the United States actually granted it.  

 

"The decision to free the Philippines was right, but the decision in 1899 to
annex the islands was also right.  It kept imperial competition in the Far
East from getting any worse than it already was.  Japan had embarked on a
drive to acquire a great empire and to oust the Western powers from the Far
East. . . ."

 

 

Comments:  It is interesting to compare the Philippine and Iraq invasions
for several reasons: 1) Both invasions were justified but Americans paid
little attention to the justifications and just wanted out.  

 

2)  Americans have shown no more inclination to study foreign affairs in the
present time than they did back in 1899.  They rely upon an unreliable press
today as they did back then.

 

3) Hearst in the oft quoted example told his artist Frederick Remington in
Havana, "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." [Page 67]
The difference between Hearst's press and the modern one is that Hearst
wanted war (regardless of the consequences) and the American Press of today
wants us to terminate our war (regardless of the consequences).  

 

4) We probably don't need to engage in one of Eric's Counterfactual
exercises to accept the idea that allowing Japan to annex the Philippines
wouldn't have been a good thing, but at the time few Americans understood
foreign affairs well enough to recognize the danger Japan presented.
Americans could have known Japan was a threat had they studied Japanese
political affairs, but they didn't.  A similar situation prevails today.  We
ought to recognize that Islamism with the broad support it gets from Islamic
Fundamentalism is a threat to us, but we don't - at least not well enough.
Of course many do realize it just as many realized the Japanese threat back
in 1899, but not enough, not a majority of voters.

 

5) Americans don't possess the ability to make long-term military
commitments probably because they don't possess the ability to understand
foreign affairs.  Looking back we can say it was prudent for America to
occupy the Philippines in order to prevent Japan from occupying it.  We did
have experts arguing for that course, but the "American Street" saw little
more than the casualties and the expense and they wanted out.  

 

6) We paid severe penalties for being militarily unprepared to deal with
hostile actions against us in the past, and we have learned from our
mistakes and possess a very prepared military today, but we haven't learned
the lesson of having an unprepared populace.  What good does it do to have
an excellent military if the populace is too ignorant to know when to use
it?  Granted, the experts can send the military to war, but the populace
must vote to pay for it and as long as their ignorance prevails, they won't
be willing to pay for a very long war.   

 

7) We tolerate children asking, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?  Are we
there yet?"   But this approach seems to lack something when it comes to the
conduct of foreign affairs.  It was the approach that got us out of the
Philippines - albeit not until the Japanese threat had been eliminated, and
it is an approach being applied today.  Whether it will be of sufficient
coercive force to get us out of the Iraq prematurely remains to be seen.  

 

Lawrence

 

 

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